


The Secluded Glade

by palomeheart



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Angst with a Happy Ending, Drugging, Genderqueer!Dan, HDM got queered, His Dark Materials AU, Homophobia, Internalized Homophobia, Kidnapping, M/M, Non Consensual Daemon Touching, Same-Sex Daemons, Sort Of, all just alluded to, also the non consensual daemon touching is only non consensual on the part of the human, basically we have some queer feels then we work it out, but can you really be outed by your own daemon if your daemon is you, he’s pretty meh about gender, his daemon anyway, if you were okay with HDM it’s all pretty in line with that, just very briefly and then it's intentionally not repeated, self-hood is kind of a mess in this fic but that's part of the fun, the daemon initiates it, there's also a scene with a quasi-outing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-22
Updated: 2020-03-23
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:48:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 58,901
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22852015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/palomeheart/pseuds/palomeheart
Summary: Phil Lester has always been acutely aware of the ways he and his daemon Adra are different from others. Namely that Adra is male, hasn’t settled yet, and they share second sight that causes them to have dreams that show them glimpses of the future. Now, as a consequence of one of his prophetic dreams, he’s forced to go on a rescue mission to find a group of children that have gone missing from his town. He may have signed up for more than he bargained for, however, when they find another man who’s been captured with some differences of his own.
Relationships: Dan Howell/Phil Lester
Comments: 92
Kudos: 55





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is my fic for the Phandom Reverse Bang 2019, filling [@itsmyusualphannie](https://itsmyusualphannie.tumblr.com/)'s art prompt for a Dan and Phil daemon AU. You can go see her [fantastic daemon art here](https://itsmyusualphannie.tumblr.com/post/190971009145/dan-and-his-daemon-cae-theythem-phil-and-his). And a big thank you as well to [@insectbah](https://insectbah.tumblr.com/)' for betaing this fic, as well as @itsmyusualphannie for helping out with the editing process! Both of your comments were invaluable in the writing and improving of this story.
> 
> This is a story I've wanted to write for a while. The main concept came about because of the discussion (or mostly lack of discussion) of daemon gender in the original His Dark Materials trilogy. I read The Golden Compass for the first time around age 12, and immediately noticed and filed away a single line about the one character Pullman mentioned who had a daemon of the same sex as him. Upon subsequent readings as I got older and came to terms with my own sexuality, I read his otherness and his loneliness as indications that he was gay, and that it was not something accepted in that universe, or at least not openly acknowledged. 
> 
> Interestingly, I remembered the line as much more negative than it actually is. In The Golden Compass, p 124, Pullman says, “Bernie was a kindly, solitary man, one of those rare people whose daemon was the same sex as himself.” I had for some reason remembered it saying something about him not being happy, or not being able to find happiness, but the subtle otherness and solitude in this line still speak to me of this particular flavor of queer coded character I was so used to growing up on in late 90’s, early 00’s media, who were kindly but often alone, as if that was a secondary characteristic of being gay.
> 
> Ever since then I've wanted to dig deeper into sexuality and gender in the HDM universe and what it means to have a daemon that’s the same sex as you—or even potentially outside of the gender binary—how others would interact with you, how it might impact how you interact with your own daemon and any forms it may or may not choose to take on. This is that story, told through the coming together of Dan and Phil in this world. It’s set sometime a bit before The Golden Compass, when the Magisterium is still working out their theories about separating children from their daemons.
> 
> In the new series, specifically The Secret Commonwealth, ‘homosexuality’ is discussed fairly casually, if still a little otheringly. I saw it as Pullman attempting to address any criticism of the lack of gay characters and theories around same sex daemons signifying queerness without putting any real effort into understanding what actual queerness would look like in his world. I don’t think anything I say or do here contradicts the new canon, per se, but it doesn’t work very hard to incorporate it either. 
> 
> This story is very deeply rooted in HDM canon and reading it without familiarity with that canon may be a bit difficult, but I did try to make it as generally accessible as possible. Just in case anyone does want to try, here’s a rundown of some key concepts from Pullman’s canon that are central to this story:  
> –It’s taboo for humans to touch another person’s daemon outside of romantic/sexual relationships.  
> –Humans and daemons can’t go more than a few feet apart without intense pain unless they’re separated (very rare). Witches and their daemons can separate by hundreds of miles without pain because of a rite of passage they go through when they come of age. All witches are women.  
> –Generally in Pullmans’ universe men have female daemons and vice versa. He doesn't acknowledge any variation in gender. He has mentioned (outside of the books) that people with daemons of the same sex are prone to ‘second sight’.  
> –Daemons tend to ‘settle’ (stop changing forms and take on one form that is supposed to be linked to the person’s personality) around puberty. In the books this was often tied to a loss of innocence/discovery of sex/sexuality.  
> –There are many worlds in this universe, including one very much like our own where humans don’t have daemons. In Dan and Phil’s world, the Holy Church is very powerful in the UK and those who go against the church can be punished by the Magisterium, the church's ruling authority. Around this time the Magisterium were interested in doing experiments on why children’s daemons settle when they reach puberty, how it might be related to original sin, and how to prevent that (Philip Pullman has some Thoughts about Christianity, and they are not subtle). There are other subtle differences between the worlds, such as different words (hot chocolate v. chocolatl) and different technologies (they have electricity but they call it anbaric power).

The clearing Phil steps into is wide and open, the moonlight reflecting off the unbroken layer of snow on the ground nearly blinding him for a moment. He knows where he is instantly, though he couldn’t say how. He also knows he’s never been here before, but that it’s close to a place he’s become very familiar with in the past few weeks.

With a sigh he turns to look to either side of him, sliding his hands first into his coat, then trouser pockets, just to make sure. But no, Adra isn’t with him in this dream either. It should feel wrong, should have him doubled over in pain in the snow, but instead there is nothing. Not even a loud, insistent nothingness, pulling at the centre of him until he feels completely hollow. It is an ordinary nothingness. An itch he forgot the urge to scratch, the breath going in and out of his lungs unquestioned. 

He scans the edge of the clearing quickly, trying to find a break in the trees, or any indication of what direction that awful warehouse might be in. If he’s going to have these dreams, he might as well try to put them to use. Find more clues, figure out exactly where they are. But the trees are large and tightly packed along the edge of the clearing, allowing Phil no glimpse of light save the small window of the sky above. When he looks back up at the moon, full and nearly perfectly centred in the slice of sky he can see, a dark blur darts across it.

A bat, he tells himself. It’s just a bat. He’s seen hundreds of bats in his life. Sure, they had been smaller, and had never felt so distinctly human, so distinctly daemon, but if it is a daemon, that means there’s someone else here. Phil doesn’t want anyone else to be here.

It could be Adra, but aside from the fact that he’s never taken on the form of a bat in Phil’s memory, it simply doesn’t feel like him. Phil would know. Even with as distant and inscrutable as Adra’s been acting recently, Phil could always recognise his other half. His soul.

Phil turns back to the centre of the clearing and there’s a tree there now that he’s pretty sure didn’t exist before. He feels a similar sort of nondescript emptiness, this time taking up the spot where fear should be clutching at his body, as he moves closer to it. There’s a dark form hanging from one of the branches, alone on its section of the tree and clearly highlighted against the bright white background. At least the dream has decided not to be cryptic tonight.

Phil knows it’s the bat he saw. The daemon. He scans the edge of the clearing again, sure there must be someone else here, but he sees no one. The trees are just far enough away to be too far a distance between this daemon and its human, so unless the human has figured out how to be invisible, it’s just the two of them.

The daemon is alone, just as he is. This, at least, feels odd. Wrong. More wrong still, though not registering as such in his dream state, is his urge to touch it. As he gets closer he can see some of its features coming into focus. This daemon has taken the form of the biggest bat he’s ever seen, hanging upside down on the branch, big and brown and fuzzy in a way that’s just begging Phil to reach out and stroke and cuddle. Maybe Adra’s absence is finally starting to wear on dream Phil. Maybe he’s losing his mind, losing all sense of proper decorum and his own previously held boundaries.

He’s close enough now to touch, if he wants, and he still does want, contrary to every remaining shred of sense left in him telling him it’s not right. He has no idea who this daemon is, who their human is, but his hand is reaching out anyway, fingers waving slightly in the cool night air as if in anticipation of the softness of the fur. He’d always preferred it when Adra took on forms with particularly velvety fur, and the bat’s looks as soft as the chinchilla Adra had been on several occasions. 

With a suddenness that startles Phil into a half stumble, hand snapping back to his side immediately, the strange daemon’s eyes.

“Behind you!” they shout.

Phil feels frozen in place as a hand grabs his shoulder, grasp heavy and hot.

“Phil!” the bat daemon shouts, and Phil wonders if he should be concerned that they know his name, but then he hears his name again, this time from behind him. “Phil! Get up!”

He bolts upright, head crashing into something hard and objecting. Claws dig into the flesh of his thigh for a moment and he’s scrambling for something to defend himself with until Adra’s head, large and ringed with a tufted mane, presses against his own, a deep, rumbling roar from the back of his throat rattling Phil into stillness.

Right. Dream. It had been a dream, and now he’s awake. With a throbbing head and an irate brother who’s rubbing at his own forehead. They hadn’t fought physically in years, but a small part of Phil delights at having gotten a punch in, so to speak. Adra’s claws extend again, pressing into the soft flesh of Phil’s thigh.

“We’re leaving in an hour and the boat’s nearly packed. Get up and get dressed so you can at least pretend to be helpful.”

Martyn’s already walking out the door before Phil can properly pull himself from the sticky molasses grasp of his dream, but he watches with clear eyes as Hebe trails behind with an apologetic second glance, her chubby, whiskered face far too adorable to stay mad at for long. No matter how stuffy and serious Martyn’s become in the past few months since starting to work for their father’s shipping company, his softer, sillier side is always betrayed in the playful wriggling of his river otter daemon. Still, even with the softening effect of Hebe, the changes Phil’s seen in his brother have only made Phil dread all the more the maturing he was supposed to be getting around to any day now.

Phil groans and flops over onto his belly as Adra’s big head prods at his back. He’d managed to forget in the excitement of his dream that most of the men of his town are setting out on a rescue mission this morning, and that he’s a part of it, as hard to believe as that might be.

“Five more minutes.”

“We’re already late,” Adra responds in his best stern tone, shifting into a woodpecker and tapping rapidly on the headboard right above Phil’s head.

“Yeah but I need to try to figure out the dream before I forget it, don’t I? And stop that, mum’ll kill us if you make any more holes in the furniture.”

“Fine, but only five minutes. I’m counting.” Adra, suddenly a lion top of him again, lays his heavy head onto the small of Phil’s back, as if physically holding him to his proposed task.

With nothing better to do and his overly responsible daemon staring him down, Phil takes a moment to sift through the dream again, trying to let the details wash over him one more time as they slowly slip from his mind. Had there been anything useful? Anything new that might help in their search for this place?

The thing about prophetic dreams—if you want to call them that; it’s a bit of a strong word for dreams that tend to vaguely warn at events an average of 12 hours in advance—is they’re just as surreal and uninterpretable as normal dreams. At least Phil’s are. His grandmother had always spoken of hers with more certainty, but she’d had years to figure the whole thing out by the time Phil met her. Mostly he’d just had a handful of years of mildly prophetic dreams warning him when the milk was about to go off or that he was going to get a zit, until all of a sudden the fate of several missing children was resting upon his ability to locate a nondescript abandoned warehouse he’d only seen in odd, disjointed flashes.

These dreams, of course, have been different. For one, they’ve been happening for over three weeks now, nearly every night. The first had happened about four days before the first child had disappeared. Or been taken, it would seem. They’ve become his new norm. Put on his pjs, brush his teeth, go to bed with a deep sense of dread dragging down on his lungs, finally fall into a fitful sleep and visit a warehouse situated on the banks of a river just past a fork and sitting on a hill surrounded by a thick ring of trees. Most nights Phil’s subconscious, or presentience, or whatever it was that took the reins in these situations, brought him to a room with one then two then four kids Phil recognised from around his small town. All around the age of 10 or 11, all huddled in narrow beds under thin sheets. All missing from their homes.

Once he’d realised who it was in his dreams and that they were really happening—at least they probably were—it had taken him an hour and a half to tell anyone. Well, in actual fact he’d never told anyone himself. Adra had been the one, huffing and pacing, glaring at Phil for his hesitancy, who had finally left the sanctuary of their bedroom and gone to find his mum’s daemon, a capybara named Belenus, shifting into a small garter snake to wrap around Belenus’ neck and whisper in his ear.

There had been a flurry of activity after that. Phil’s dad had clapped him on the back hard enough to send Phil staggering into the kitchen table before he rushed out the door to call a meeting in the town hall. His mum had bustled around the kitchen, taking breakfast off the stove and handing Phil a lukewarm mug of coffee, then hurried back up to her room to change. Adra had stayed loosely coiled around Belenus’ neck, so Phil followed after, the reluctant caboose on that strange, fitful train. Martyn watched all of this with a skeptical eye, saying nothing though the judgement was clear in his gaze. Phil knows Martyn would have said something sooner, come up with a plan right away.

Phil had been delivered to the front of the hall, still in his pajamas, Adra dragging the loose material down as he climbed up Phil’s side as a red panda before shifting into a red squirrel to perch on his shoulder. Only after a reproachful look from Phil though, and even then it was less than ideal, as they tried to avoid shifting in front of others. It could have been worse, but a red panda wasn’t exactly his subtlest form in the crowd of dog and cat and mice and rabbit daemons.

If Phil had been a daemon, he would have shifted into a mouse, or a brown moth blending into the wood walls behind him. Maybe even a flea. Something with wings to fly away. But he wasn’t of course. What he was instead was human, the son of the most powerful, richest man in their small but lively town, and inheritor of their family’s penchant for second sight. And all that came along with it.

But instead Adra had taken on a form that was bright and large and uncommon, standing in front of the crowd and drawing even more attention to them than necessary. Phil had been questioned for what felt like hours, until images from the dreams had been dragged from the furthest depths of his memory, or possibly his imagination. No one wanted to listen to that theory though, least of all the parents of the missing children. Phil understood, he did, but it didn’t make it any more likely that the vision of a fork in the river coerced out of Phil’s hazy recollections was the same fork three or four days’ journey north of here that Paul Baker swore up and down it had to be. 

Or that if it was, they’d manage to navigate from there to the building where the children were. Or that they’d be able to get them out. Or that they’d still be there. Somehow it felt worse to lead the town on a wild goose chase than just not try at all. 

He’d never been a fan of false hope. 

Phil’s dragged jarringly back into the present by the slight sting of claws pressing lightly into the skin above his shoulder blades.

“It’s been eight minutes,” Adra growls close in his ear. He changes into a mouse to wriggle his way under Phil’s chest before shifting again, back to a lion so Phil is displaced off the bed, hanging half off his back. 

“I thought you didn’t want to go either. I thought we’d agreed we should stay as far away from that horrible place as possible.” Phil rolls back onto the bed and tugs the covers over his head. Neither of them can pinpoint it exactly, but something about even thinking about what they’d unanimously dubbed ‘that horrible place’ feels off. A chill seeps through them when they talk about it, numbing the link between them. Phil privately thinks it might have to do with the fact that Adra’s never actually there in the dreams, though he can see all of it.

There’s a screech and a yank, and then Phil’s watching as Adra, now a sparrowhawk, flies to the other side of the room with his duvet. Phil sticks out his tongue and throws an arm over his eyes.

“I don’t. But we agreed to, and anyway, we should help.”

Phil feels a whoosh of air over his face and watches as Adra flies back to the end of his bed, perching on the left post and peering at Phil with a piercing gaze. His blue-grey and orange feathers catch in the light of the rising sun, glowing with a beautiful brightness. With a groan, Phil flops back over, burying his face in the pillow. 

There were several months when they were younger, maybe eleven or twelve, when Adra had gone through a phase of only taking the form of birds, anything from a house sparrow to a toucan or flamingo. He’d particularly loved flying, and Phil had loved getting to experience that swooping joy in his gut just as much as Adra had. Until Martyn pointed out, trying to be helpful Phil was sure, that most birds made Phil’s…difference particularly obvious.

A small furry body wriggles back under his arm, staying put this time, and Phil looks down to see the chubby, obscenely cute face of a pika staring back at him. He sighs and rolls back over, drawing Adra to the centre of his chest and holding him there, accepting the apology, or perhaps as an apology of his own. Their usually effortless silent communication has gotten a bit muddied recently.

“We have to get up.” His voice always rises in pitch a bit when he takes on smaller mammal forms like this, sounding less confrontational, more timorous.

“I know.”

“We have to do this.”

“I know.”

“It’ll be okay.”

Phil lets Adra’s words, small and trembling as they are, hang between them as he finally gets out of bed, dropping Adra on top of his dresser. He leans into the mundane tasks, the ones he does every morning, feeling himself settle in his body as he shoves his limbs into his clothes, brushes his teeth, and arranges his hair.

When he gets to the kitchen he lets his mother dote on him, bringing him coffee and a pastry and settles warm hands on his head and his shoulders and his back. He remembers for a moment the dream, the scorching grip on his shoulder such a contrast to the light, warm touch of his mother. He looks over at Adra, curled up with his eyes closed on top of Belenus’ back. He feels the familiar ache in his chest open up again, thinking back to the days when he used to curl up in a pile with them, his mum curled around all of them.

“It will all be alright, darling,” his mum says above him, voice clearer and steadier than Adra’s earlier this morning. “Your brother will take care of you. You’ll stay on the boat; they just need you to find that horrible place.”

That horrible place. She calls it that too, and he can’t remember if she picked it up from him, or if she started calling it that on her own. He still remembers so clearly the first dream he’d had about it, three weeks ago now. He’d woken shivering uncontrollably, unable to shake an overwhelming sense of dread and desperation he’d gotten from the place. It was something he hadn’t done in years, but before he’d processed it, Phil had found himself in his parents’ bed, his father grumbling and getting up to go sleep in Phil’s bed, while Phil had pressed his trembling body into the steadiness of his mother’s arms. 

The images and other pieces of information had come back slowly. The long, dark hallways that echoed horribly with the sharp clacking of purposeful footsteps that Phil knew weren’t his own. The stale smell to the air, belonging to the old life of the building—a warehouse by the looks of it—and the heavy stench of fear in the air. Adra hadn’t been with him—a realisation that hit him like a punch in the gut once he remembered, but that he knows had felt normal in the dream—but if he had, Phil knew his hackles would have been raised. Or maybe not, since Phil knew he should feel cold in that hard, empty place, but when he ran his hand over his arms he didn’t find a single goosepimple. 

It had been a week of that, returning to that horrible place every night then scrambling into his parents’ bed. Falling asleep to a hand soothing circles into his back and waking up to a gentle, cautious voice trying to help him pluck some sort of sense from the dreams. Growing up, he slowly realised that while his mum talking him down from nightmares was normal, spending thirty minutes inspecting every small detail he could manage to remember from them wasn’t. He’d told her this once, and she had said his dreams made him special. One day they could make a difference to someone, if he just learned to pull them apart and put them back together in the right order. 

Then, just as she had predicted, as the children had gone missing from his town they had showed up one by one in his dreams. Only when he realized the significance, he had considered pretending they had never happened. Until Adra told. And everything went to shit. 

His mum finally takes his empty plate and his cold coffee from in front of him with a small nudge to his back. He’s been sitting here too long, too lost in his own thoughts as always.

It’s time to get up. Only he can’t seem to move his feet.

Phil knows that he’s overly cautious. Cowardly. Selfish. He likes comfort; he likes familiarity; he likes his routines. One small change can throw him off for days, weeks even. He is a hard worker, sometimes too much so, but he’s also prone to getting lost in his own head, and would rather be left alone to wander there for hours at a time. 

None of these things make him a good candidate for joining a search and rescue mission that is likely very dangerous and very definitely poorly planned. They’re going in mostly blind, with just the visions of Phil’s second sight, for whatever those are worth.

Phil doesn’t think it’s much, but no one seems to agree with him. Even Adra.

It takes a kiss planted on the top of his hand and another pastry tucked in his jacket pocket before Phil finally gets up, shouldering the bag he’d packed the night before. Martyn had warned him to pack lightly, perhaps because he was known for always having the most luggage on their family trips. But for once he had heeded this advice, packing like the reluctant traveler he was. His bag was the bag of someone who didn’t fully believe they were actually going on a trip. But now here he was, with just three extra shirts, enough underwear and socks for six days, and two books to last him however long it took to find this unknown place. It was a protest, but one that would only harm him in the end.

His specialty. 

Adra had been the one who talked him into adding a second book, pestering and knocking at every wooden surface in their room with his sharp beak until Phil had slipped his well worn copy of The Hobbit into the bag on top of The Shining, muttering the whole time that he wasn’t going to need a second book.

Even with the two books his pack is light, but it feels as if it could drag him to the floor as he trudges through town, avoiding his usual shortcuts to the docks. The familiar sight of his father’s smallest cargo boat is still in front of him before he knows it. His dad’s there of course, even though he’s not coming. He’d wanted to, but it had been decided that it was best to send a small, inconspicuous group, and Nigel Lester didn’t go out on a lot of cargo hauls anymore. It wasn’t likely that anyone was watching, but it didn’t hurt to be cautious. 

Even before the children had gone missing, tensions between neighbors had been high in Phil’s town. For as long as he could remember, actually. Phil’s parents had told him once that it had really started, as far as they could recall, with the introduction of a group called the League of St. Alexander at the local school. The group had encouraged children to report their parents for saying or doing anything that went against the Holy Church. Phil had been too young to ever get the chance to join before it had been disbanded at his school, but he doesn’t think he would have wanted to join. His family isn’t the type to say much against the Magisterium anyway, but he can’t imagine wanting to rat them out even if they did. In fact, if anyone in their family were going to get reported it would probably be him.

Now his dad claps Phil on the back, shooting him a proud grin that just adds more weight to his load. Then he’s pointing at some crate to his right and by the time Phil processes his request that Phil bring it onto the boat, he’s gone.

He can feel his breaths quickening, and the weight of Adra settled across his shoulders as a red panda, heavy and sure, but mostly he can feel that peculiar sensation of his feet sinking into the solid ground beneath him as if it were molasses. The air thickens to a similar texture around him, pressing in close, crowded with the buzz of words and bangs and thumps and shouts, traveling slower to him through the viscous panic.

By the time Martyn’s words get through to him, he doesn’t know how long he’s been repeating them.

“Phil! Get a move on,” Martyn grunts as he shoves his way past, knocking Phil roughly with his shoulder. “We haven’t got time for daydreaming. Load that box on the boat or get out of the way.”

Phil glares after his brother, then glances back down at the box in front of him. It’s technically not too heavy for him to pick up, but he very much doubts he’s going to be able to get it all the way to the boat, and into whatever dank, dark, claustrophobic corner it’s meant to be tucked into. Still, he knows it wasn’t meant as an actual choice. 

He’s expected to move this box. He’s expected to get on the boat. He’s expected to take part in this doomed rescue mission. Failure to do so is not an option.

“Well come on, pouting about it isn’t going to do us any good,” Adra says, voice deepening as he shifts into a gorilla. As he leans forward to take one end of the crate, Phil catches a flash of silver on his back.

“Your back,” Phil hisses, “you have to change.” He whips his head to the left, then right, taking in the bustle around him. All of the people who might see. 

“No one will know,” Adra replies impatiently, rattling the box. “Come on.”

“I don’t care which one of you moves it,” Martyn says as he walks by again, holding a large pile of blankets, “but it needs to go on the boat. Now. Come on Phil, if Adra’s helping, so can you.”

“See?” Adra shoves the box a bit closer to Phil as he glares.

“Change,” Phil insists. Adra huffs, but shifts into a brown bear, scraping his claws against the wood of the box as he grabs it again and lifts it by himself. 

Phil follows along quickly, feeling stupid for his empty arms, but having no choice but to stay a few paces behind his daemon. They get a few odd looks as they find a place to set the cargo down, but for the most part the crew is made up of men from his town, people he’d grown up around who know him well enough by now to not be surprised by much.

Adra had probably been right. It’s not like it’s a secret. Not a very well kept one anyway.

Phil can feel Adra’s breath hot on the back of his neck, still in bear form despite the narrow deck passageway. He shifts back to a red panda, finally, as they approach Phil’s father standing near the stern speaking in hushed tones to Jack Davies, the captain for this mission. 

The weight and warmth of his furry body draped across Phil’s shoulders is a welcome barrier against the icy wind blowing in off the water. Phil tries to focus on that as he makes his way to the little closet Martyn had pointed out as his room.

Phil had grown up around and on boats, but had spent most of his time coming up with excuses to stay as far away from them as possible. His friends always teased him about how sea sick he got, pointing out how it was hilarious that the son of the owner of the largest cargo shipping company in Northern England couldn’t even last a full minute on a boat without throwing up. It wasn’t quite as funny when you’re the one heaving over the side of the boat.

They’d learned ways to cope, forms Adra could take that would lessen his queasiness and lessen Phil’s in the process, when to lay low and when to get fresh air, but Phil knows he’ll spend the first few days at least pretty miserable.

Knowing that if he leaves he’ll be roped into more box carrying, or worse, doomed attempts at planning, he throws his bag onto the floor and himself onto the narrow bed. 

It’s still early enough and Phil’s gotten into bad enough habits that he falls asleep easily, especially with Adra as a warm lump of fur settled up against his side. Apparently he’d reached his nagging quota for the day.

* * *

He’s roused by a soft knock at his door and blinks his eyes blearily, reaching around for his glasses that he must have knocked off in his sleep at some point.

“Who is it?” he calls, hoping the sleep still thick in his throat isn’t too obvious. 

“Martyn.”

Phil sighs, taking a few breaths to steel himself for another lecture before responding. “Come in.”

Martyn’s got a tense grin on his face when he gets the door open, balancing a cup in his other hand and a box under his chin.

“Did Cornelia send you?” 

Cornelia and his brother have only been dating a couple of months now, but Phil already teases Martyn that she’s Phil’s favourite member of the family. It would be a very Cornelia move to send Martyn to check in on Phil.

“No. Can’t a brother come check up on his brother?”

Phil feels a small prick of guilt at the sincerity in his voice. “Sorry I didn’t help with anything else earlier. I laid down for a second and I must have fallen asleep.”

“It’s fine Phil. I know the first few days on a boat are rough for you, even on the river. I brought you some tea and sea sickness patches.” Martyn sets the tea down on his bedside table and sits down on the only other surface in the room, a trunk set against the far wall. Phil knows he shouldn’t complain about his tiny room though. At least it’s private. If it wasn’t his dad’s boat he’d likely be sharing with at least three other people.

“Thanks.”

Martyn doesn’t respond immediately and Phil turns his attention to their daemons chattering easily in the corner. Adra’s always gotten along with Hebe, even when Martyn and Phil occasionally clashed growing up and he often took on the form of an otter with her once Hebe had settled. Mostly Phil thinks it’s sweet, but today it grates on his already frayed nerves. He can feel the edges of a headache starting to sidle into his brain and takes a sip of the tea.

Martyn always makes it just like their mum does.

“I’m sorry I was so short this morning. And for the past few days too. I’ve just been…nervous. This is the first thing I’ve been given a chance to lead. I want to do well.” He pauses, scraping a clump of mud off the bottom of his shoe against the edge of the chest. “I want to keep you safe. Mum made me promise.”

“Of course she did. I’m her favourite.”

Martyn’s stiff smile instantly softens as he leans back and lets out a loud laugh. Hebe and Adra tussle on the floor, Hebe coming out on top and sitting firmly on top of Adra’s wiggling body.

“No, because you’re the baby, and I have to protect you. And I will.” His voice is serious again, and Phil wants to duck out of the entire conversation. He’s never wanted any of this responsibility; Martyn’s welcome to all of it.

“Fine.”

“You’re not going anywhere near this place. You’re going to stay on the boat with Cornelia and enough of the crew to run the boat if we don’t come back—”

“Martyn—”

“No, listen to me for one second, then I’ll leave you alone. I know that’s all you want these days. You won’t be in danger. You’ll find the building, then your job will be done. I know you don’t want to be here, but it’s important. You know Nana would have done it.”

It’s a low blow, and Phil knows Martyn knows it. Adra nips Hebe sharply on the leg and she chirps as she clambers off him.

“I’m here, aren’t I?”

“And I appreciate that. We all do, especially the parents—”

“Alright, that’s enough. I can’t exactly escape at this point. You’ve got me here, no need to guilt me or flatter me anymore.”

“I’m not flattering you. It’s important. You’re important. We need your help to—”

“Find the old warehouse a little past the fork, to the left and up a bit from the bank on a hill, fourth window from the right on the second floor,” Phil intones. “I know.”

“I’m just saying you could have a role in this community, an important role, if you weren’t so stubborn and reclusive—”

“And maybe if you weren’t so obedient and eager to please, you could see a life outside the one Dad’s planned for us.” 

“That’s not why I’m doing this, Phil. But of course, if something doesn’t fit into your narrow view of how things are, it can’t be true, right?”

Adra’s at the edge of his consciousness suddenly, scrabbling sharp claws against the border of it and he leans forward with his mind, letting Adra’s thoughts in. He’s angry and distracted though, so it doesn’t come through as a clear thought, just a jumble of Cornelia and warmth but also fear and distrust and otherness and Phil shoves the complicated ball of anxiety tangled in it aside and plucks out the lowest hanging fruit.

“Or to impress a pretty girl. Cornelia asked you to do this, didn’t she?” He throws a significant look over to Hebe and Adra, no longer chatting.

Martyn looks shocked for a moment, then glances back at Hebe and Adra. He holds Hebe’s gaze for a moment before he growls and turns back to Phil. 

“Would you quit it with that creepy mind meld shit you two do? As if you weren’t weird enough to begin with.”

The room goes still for a moment before Adra surges forward, standing between them suddenly in one of his loudest forms. A larger than life lion with his impossible to miss mane. Martyn looks down at him, then back up into Phil’s eyes. He looks geniuniely sorry, at least.

“Phil, I didn’t mean—”

“Yes you did. You don’t have to lie to me anymore. I may be the baby but I’m not a little kid.”

“You know I think you’re weird, but I didn’t—not for those reasons. You’re just—you’re Phil. You’re a weirdo.”

“Right.” His voice sounds strange to his own ears, thicker and deeper than normal.

“Shit, I’m making it worse. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. You know I love you.”

“As long as I’m not being too obviously abnormal.”

Martyn sighs heavily and Phil’s gripped with a sudden urge to lunge forward and shove the exasperated air back into his brother’s lungs. This isn’t his to sigh over. He’s not the one walking around with a scarlet letter on his back. Or a silver billboard on his daemon’s. Or an advertisement of it wrapped around his neck. Adra shakes his head, his mane snapping around his face.

“I know I haven’t always been the best about…supporting you. I was only trying to keep you safe. That’s all I want, Phil. For you to be happy and safe. Don’t forget to put on a patch before you fall asleep again, okay?”

With those last weary words he’s out the door, and it should be what Phil wanted, but if he felt he could, he’d go chasing after Martyn. Adra keeps glancing between him and the door, but he feels glued to the spot again and he knows he won’t.

“I didn’t tell you about Cornelia for you to throw it in his face you know,” Adra snaps finally. “I was trying to get you to calm down. What’s even the point of us being able to communicate wordlessly if you misinterpret it so badly?”

Phil winces, but Adra doesn’t seem to notice in his restless pacing around the small room, so Phil falls back onto the bed, deciding all forms of communication are off limits for a while. 

The wordless communication had been something they discovered they could do around the age of six. Well, maybe that’s an oversimplification. It was something they discovered they had the capacity for then, but it took years of practice and refinement to get it to where they are now, able to exchange fairly complex ideas and even a few words without speaking aloud. Phil can’t fully remember what it was like before they’d developed this ability, but from his fuzzy memories and observing others, he thinks probably most people can only feel the emotions of their daemons, a swell of happiness or fear or longing, but not the underlying thoughts.

For the most part, he tries to conceal this ability, but his family has noticed. It’s just another thing to set him apart, after all. He thinks it probably comes along with the second sight, supposedly caused or made possible by Adra being male. Being wrong.

No one’s ever used that word outside of schoolyard bullies, but they don’t need to. The rest of their words speak the truth clearly enough.

Maybe he should be glad Martyn called him a weirdo. He’s preferred the honesty to the brave faces and fake smiles his family had piled on him for years for about as long as he can remember, but he’s come to appreciate it with a new and surprising desperation. It hadn’t taken him all that long to figure out who he was, how he was different, the ways his family saw it and shied away from it, even if they loved him. The way it affected them. His grandmother had been the same, revered within the family and their community, but also avoided. Nearly always on her own, off in some corner with her lizard daemon, Astraea. She had been the only one who hadn’t treated him like that, but he’d been too afraid of her at the time to appreciate it, and then she’d passed away and Phil was all alone in his weirdness again.

When she was still alive, before Phil turned seven, he would often go over to sit near her despite his fear, reading one of his animal books at the foot of her favorite armchair. He was equal parts terrified and obsessed with her, and though they shared several links—daemons of the same sex as themselves, the supposedly prophetic dreams—they rarely spoke. She and Astraea seemed to be able to communicate effortlessly without words, which is what made Phil first consider it. 

She had been married, at least, but Phil had never met his grandfather, who had died two years before Phil had been born, and she never spoke of him with her rare words. His mum had told him that they’d loved each other very much, but Phil had seen photos and something about them looked different to him, even at a young age. They didn’t stand as close as the other couples in the pictures. The distance terrified him.

Restless and desperate for a distraction, Phil reaches into his bag to retrieve his book, picking up where he left off and stubbornly reading fifty pages, though he doesn’t absorb a single word of it. He finishes his tea, even though it’s gone cold by now, and pointedly doesn’t put on a seasickness patch. He’s not on the sea anyway; it’s absurd that he gets so nauseated. His stomach doesn’t listen to this logic, unfortunately, and he has to make a quick dash to the side of the boat several times over the next few hours.

Adra responds to his self-destructive protest by shifting into a squirrel monkey, the form that seems to make their nausea the worst, until they finally drag themselves back to the bed for the fifth time and Phil relents and fumbles in the now dim light to peel off a patch and stick it on his wrist. 

Adra snuffles an obvious ‘I told you so,’ into his skin as he worms his way under the covers as a long tailed macaque, his form least susceptible to motion sickness. It can’t be past five or six, but it’s dark and he’s exhausted and grumpy, and sleep seems like the best possible thing at the moment, so he closes his eyes and leans reluctantly into Adra’s warmth.

* * *

When Phil opens his eyes the next morning all he can see is a haze of bright gold. It would be alarming if it weren’t the way he woke up most mornings these days. Phil’s not sure if Adra shifts in his sleep or does it purposefully, but more often than not he wakes to a lion glued to his side or pressing down on his chest.

He can’t particularly blame Adra. It had been a favourite form of both of theirs when they were growing up, what Phil had boasted to friends when they were young and speculating about what their daemons would settle as. Someone brave and strong who stood up for what they believed in. Back when that had felt like something he could be. Before it was pointed out to him what else it would say about him. Before Adra’s lion form had grown a mane.

Now Phil doesn’t want him to take that form in front of anyone else, and Adra doesn’t. Mostly. Phil’s learned to live with his family seeing it. It had felt terrifying at first, but he almost completely believes they don’t mind.

Phil passes a tentative, conciliatory hand through the coarse fur of Adra’s mane. He snorts and shifts beneath Phil, rolling over to cover more of him with his body, more of his face with his mane.

Phil has a character in his head, who Adra would be if he were a she. Susan, he’d named her at age five, young enough to think of a name for a daemon like Susan, old enough to start to notice the whispers, the second, lingering looks. He was still just starting to wrap his head around being himself, being themselves, a distinct person in the world, separate from others. Perhaps more separate then he ever could have imagined.

Now, past their otherness in relation to the rest of the world, Phil’s been grappling with the growing gap between them. How they can have such different opinions on what form Adra should take and who can see. How they can be different at all, if they’re two parts of a whole. Both separate from each other and a persistent, aching sameness Phil doesn’t quite know how to reconcile. 

It’s not something he’s ever told Adra about, or ever would, but he thinks Adra knows all the same. In that unique knowing–not–knowing way that exists between a person and their daemon. Some things you just know. Some things the two of them know particularly well. 

Martyn leaves him alone over the next two days, and Phil manages to avoid almost everyone else on the ship. He spends the most time with Bernie, the cook who serves him his 4 am coffee and 11 pm sandwiches with a wry smile, otherwise spending long hours in his room or on deck when no one else is around, shivering in the cold night air and staring up at the sky full of stars.

The only person he can’t avoid is Cornelia, who seems to have an uncanny knack for tracking him down and finds him at least once a day to check in on him and bring him food and what she calls ‘some much needed company.’ He calls it harrassment, but not to her face, and he does appreciate the chance to get some light interaction with someone who he actually likes. He loves Martyn of course, but he doesn’t like him very much at the moment, and the rest of the crew are practically strangers to him.

On their fourth day on the boat Cornelia finds him a little before sunset. They’d gotten to the fork in the river earlier that afternoon and had been moving very slowly ever since then, all hands on deck scanning the banks of the river as much as possible without seeming suspicious. Phil had been included in the all hands for once, and he was grumpy and prickly after hours of staring at endless foliage.

He’d been trying to enjoy his thirty minute break before being summoned back up to the deck, but Cornelia had followed him, cheerfully ignoring all of his less than subtle hints that he wanted to be alone. They’d been sitting in complete silence now for ten minutes, aside from the sounds of Adra and Bragi, her great crested grebe daemon, chatting in low tones across the room, which was fine with Phil. A little quiet is what he’d wanted anyway. Just ideally alone. 

“I didn’t ask him to do this, you know,” she says out of nowhere. “Your brother,” she adds when he doesn’t reply. “I told him it was a stupid idea and we should get a better idea of what we’re charging into before we tried raiding the lair of a bunch of kidnappers. But he is doing this for me, in theory. Do you know why?”

Phil shakes his head, unsure of where this is going or why she wanted to talk about this now. 

“I don’t think I have to tell you that your town isn’t too big on change or differences?”

He feels the prick of the words like an attack, even though he knows better to expect that from Cornelia. “I’m not—”

“I know you went away to school, but you didn’t go that far. You should know the rest of the world isn’t like this. I mean, some of it is, and some of it’s worse, but a lot of it is better too. Anyway, I meant that a lot of your lovely neighbors aren’t that keen on me coming out of nowhere and trying to become a part of your community.

“I had no idea—”

“It’s fine. It could be a lot worse. I’m white and I speak English and am generally what they think of as a respectable person. They’ve just been a little slow to warm up to me. And I’ve been considering moving on and Martyn doesn’t want me to and he thought it might help if he did something stupidly heroic. He thought if they liked him better they might like me better too.”

“He’s an idiot.”

“He is. But a very sweet idiot.”

“I guess.”

“I know he hasn’t always been the best at it, but he’s just trying to be a good brother to you. He’s still learning how to do that, I think.”

“So it’s my job to deal with it?”

“No. And yes. You could leave if you want, but if you want to keep him in your life you will have to let him figure it out.”

“I’m tired of it, Corn.”

Adra’s been edging closer to them through this conversation, a lion now and carrying Bragi on his back. This is the closest he’s ever come to discussing it outright with Cornelia. With anyone for that matter. He doesn’t talk about it, doesn’t let the obvious difference be given the weight of spoken words, and certainly doesn’t talk about how he feels about it all. But he knows Adra wants to, wants him to.

“I know. People are dicks. Did you know I’m supposed to be the one taking care of the children once we rescue them? I’ve never watched a child in my life, but of course I’m the only woman they could get to come along, so I must be the most qualified.” She rolls her eyes and Phil laughs, just a little bit. She turns her sharp blue eyes on him then, leveling him with a grave look. “But there are a lot of people out there who think better of you than you want to let them, you know.”

It feels like a bucket of water she’s poured over his lap and asked him to hold. He doesn’t know what to do with it, how to collect it and make sense of it and keep it from running down his legs and through the floorboards. Of course he knows people love him. He’s so lucky to have the family he has, and he doesn’t often forget that. But he never forgets that they aren’t like him, either. Not entirely. That there will always be this thing between them, and at some point it might get too big.

He opens his mouth to respond, but can’t get any words to come out. Cornelia reaches out and takes his hand, rubbing circles into his palm, and Phil tries to feel it, feel just that motion while he watches Bragi run his beak through Adra’s mane.

He’s just about gotten his breathing even again when the door to his room slams open to reveal a panting, wild-eyed Martyn.

“Phil, come on, we think we’ve found the building! It matches the description you gave us, but we need you to come take a look.”

The dread is instant when he spots the building, and it must show on his face, or perhaps in Adra’s posture, because he doesn’t even need to say anything. The crew springs to life around him, bringing the boat up to shore several metres past the looming building in a conveniently located inlet. 

Phil can’t pick out any of the individual conversations or actions, but somehow he’s swept back to his room with Cornelia after a quick conversation about everyone staying safe. He can’t help but think Martyn is doing anything but staying safe, and he desperately wants to cling to his wrist, wants Adra to take the form of an eagle and scoop Hebe up and carry her as far away from this terrible, terrible place as possible, dragging Phil and Martyn with them.

He doesn’t, of course, and then he’s back in his room with Cornelia and she’s telling him everything will be alright while she paces in tight circles around the small space. It feels like years pass, like Phil should be checking his hair for greys, before there’s anything more than pacing and breathing and ‘they’re going to be fine,’ but then there’s a sudden flurry of commotion outside the door and Cornelia is summoned without so much as a word to Phil about what’s happened.

He’s just about made up his mind to go out and investigate when there’s a thump on his door. When he opens it Martyn’s there, completely intact and looking triumphant if also a little harried.

“Phil, this is Dan,” he says, stepping aside to reveal a tall, shaking boy who looks to be a couple of years younger than himself leaning against one of the crew. Phil’s eyes sweep over him quickly, searching for something he can’t find. Adra shifts into a beetle, buzzing noisily in the air beside his head, darting to and fro in agitation. “We need you to keep an eye on him while we get the kids settled.”

It becomes clear that Dan is having trouble standing on his own as Martyn moves into the small cabin, dragging Dan along behind him. Phil, with little other choice, helps Martyn heft Dan over to his bed—the only bed—where he collapses onto the pillow, mumbling something too quiet to understand.

As the boy shifts restlessly, Phil takes a moment to look at him a little closer. He looks exhausted and thin, face alarmingly pale save for the deep pouches of purple beneath his eyes. Adra, meanwhile, has shifted into a sugar glider, wrapping his webbed limbs tightly around Phil’s neck. His breaths come quick and hot on Phil’s skin and Phil nearly shoos him off, until it finally clicks in Phil’s mind what’s missing.

“Where’s his daemon?”

Martyn pauses for a beat that seems to stretch on forever, hand reflexively stroking at the fur on Hebe’s back. She spends far more time on the ground than in Martyn’s arms, at least in front of Phil and it hits him with a sudden sick twist that all of them are in some sort of close contact with their daemon. All except Dan. Adra snuggles in closer to the crook of his neck.

“We’re not sure.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a warning that this is the chapter where there's non-consensual daemon touching (sort of). Adra initiates it, but Phil is not comfortable with it and has a negative reaction. It only occurs once towards the beginning of the chapter and is discussed and apologized for afterwards. 
> 
> And thanks as always to @insectbah and @itsmyusualphannie for betaing!

Phil had spent a restless, tense night on the floor, curled up in a pile of extra blankets getting absolutely zero sleep. He’d been coaxed this morning out of his room with the promise of bottomless coffee and the incentive to leave before Dan woke up. He’s sitting across from Cornelia in the canteen, Adra a mouse tucked into his pocket, staring emptily into his mug. 

She looks about as tired as he feels, enjoying a short break from her new charges. The kids are wrapped in blankets and nibbling at their scones in silence. Phil doesn’t know any of them past seeing them around town, but he knows a couple of their older siblings a bit, or their parents. One of them is the girl he’s noticed watching him sometimes with sharp, curious eyes. He’s used to stares, but hers had always felt more persistent than most, and at first he’d thought she was maybe like him, but as far as he can tell her daemon is male. For the moment she’s got her gaze locked on her lap.

“How’s Dan?” Cornelia asks in a hushed tone, still jarring in the uncharacteristic silence of the room.

“Not sure, he hasn’t woken up yet. I’m surprised you managed to get his name out of him. I’d think he was dead if I hadn’t checked his breathing.”

“He just kept saying—well, her name for a while, I assume, but he was a little more coherent when they first brought him on. He was saying all kinds of things.”

“You saw him last night?” 

“They took him to me first, but I suggested you might be able to help.”

“Oh jeez, thanks.”

“Hey, don’t look at me. I’ve already been roped into being the main caretaker of four traumatised kids for the three day trip home despite having no experience with kids. He’s around your age I think and he’s got the same hair as you.”

“So clearly I’ll know how to deal with him? He hasn’t got his daemon, Corn. He shouldn’t even be alive at this point.”

“What?” Cornelia shouts. Had she somehow not noticed what was missing from the strange boy?

“Be quiet!” Hebe hisses, jumping up onto the table with Martyn trailing behind her. She leans forward and nuzzles her nose into the feathers of Bragi’s belly, and Phil looks away quickly.

“We haven’t told anyone yet,” he says once he’s reached over the table and stolen a sip from Phil’s coffee, “We don’t want to cause any sort of panic.”

“How is he still alive?”

“Is he still?”

Phil shrugs. “He was when I left five minutes ago.”

“I don’t know. We need to talk to him once the drugs wear off. It’s possible his daemon is there, maybe just weak and something very small.” He doesn’t sound convinced though, and Phil doesn’t bother responding. “We shouldn’t be leaving him alone until he’s up though.”

Phil glares and ignores this. On top of being expected to share his bed with this… incomplete stranger, he’s supposed to keep 24/7 watch over him?

“I couldn’t sense anything, and neither could Adra. I think he’s…alone.” The word feels wrong in his mouth, bulky and heavy. Is that even the right way to say it? He’s never had to try before.

“We’re not going to know until we talk to him.”

“But what are we going to do with him if it is true? Surely he can’t last long if…” Phil can’t bring himself to say it. Adra shivers and presses closer to Phil.

“Well…he’s not going to like it, but I don’t think we have much of a choice. We have to keep heading home. We’re already half a day into the journey, and I’m afraid if we turn back now they’ll just be there looking for us. We need to get these kids home safely, regroup, and get a different boat. Then I’ll take him back and—”

“You’re not going back,” Cornelia protests, voice layering over Phil’s as he voices his somewhat more selfish concern.

“I’m not going to be the one to tell him that we’re just going to leave his daemon behind.”

“We can’t go back now, and we can’t exactly drag him away from his daemon and then just set him loose again, can we? He’s older than the others, but he’s still a kid and if he does manage to survive being this far from her, he’s not going to be in great shape. We have to help him.”

Phil and Cornelia don’t respond. Phil knows Martyn’s right, but he also doesn’t think it will matter, if anyone would be honest about the situation. And he doesn’t think they have to help him. They just should.

Adra nips at him softly through his shirt.

“We should get back and see if he’s up,” Martyn says, taking Phil’s cup again to drain it and swiping the last piece of scone from his plate. He starts out the door without checking to see if they’re following.

Cornelia sticks out her tongue at Martyn’s retreating form and hands over her mug before following them out. With a heavy sigh that jostles Adra and sets him squeaking in protest, Phil empties the cup and jogs to catch up.

Martyn’s already made it into the room by the time Phil gets to him. He’s hovering next to the bed, not daring to get much closer than Phil got earlier, Phil notes. He reaches forward, stops for a moment, then finally makes contact, shaking Dan’s shoulder gently.

“Dan? You said your name was Dan, right? Are you awake?”

Dan’s eyes snap open and there’s a brief suspended moment of stillness before Dan’s up and moving, bolting towards the door. Cornelia beats him there and stands in front of it, managing to somehow look intimidating despite being more than a head shorter than him. He stares at her for a beat, as if considering whether or not he can get past her, then slumps against the wall a few steps away, eyes wild and in constant motion.

“Dan—” Martyn starts again, hands outstretched in either an attempt to sooth or defend, or possibly both. It doesn’t seem to be doing a great job of either.

“Who the fuck are you people? What do you want from me? Where am I? Where the fuck is Cae1?”?

“Is Cae the name of your daemon?” Martyn’s tone is still calm, but he’s edging his way over to Cornelia step by small step. Phil tries his best to melt into the corner. Adra, still a mouse, pokes his nose out of Phil’s breast pocket.

“Yes.”

“Where is she?”

Dan twitches a bit, and for a second Phil thinks maybe—but then Dan’s pacing and cursing again.

“I don’t bloody know, do I? You’re the ones who took them, you bastards—”

“Took who, Dan? We didn’t take anyone. I told you, we came to rescue the kids from our town—”

“And you just left the others?”

The temperature of the room seems to plummet. Phil makes eye contact with Cornelia and sees the horror in her face.

“What others?” Martyn says, patient and calm as ever. Phil doesn’t know how he’s keeping his cool, and he’d almost be impressed if he didn’t want Martyn to just shut Dan in this room and let him work out his anger on his own.

“The other kids!”

Martyn pales. “How many more kids are there?”

“I don’t know. Maybe a dozen total, maybe 10. They don’t let us all together much.”

“Do you know what they were doing to you? Why did they take you? What do they want?”

“I’m not talking to you until you take me back to Cae. How do I know you’re any better than them?”

“Dan, please. We haven’t wanted to upset the children by asking them too many questions about it, and they don’t seem to know much anyway, but we need to make sure they’re alright and that nothing’s been done to them. That you’re alright, “ Martyn adds after a beat that’s just too long, “but we can’t do that until we know—”

“I’m not alright! I’m being dragged away from my daemon.”

“But you don’t seem to be in pain,” Cornelia breaks in.

“You have no idea what I—”

“At least not debilitating pain. Not what I’d be going through if I were this far from Bragi. I’m not sure I’d be alive at this point. How are you doing this? How were you in a different room than her at the site? Does it have to do with what they were doing there?”

A sickly silence settles over the room as Cornelia’s words sink in. Surely she’s not implying what it sounds like.

“You’re smart, at least,” Dan says finally, staring at her hard for a moment before turning his glare back to the floor. 

“Were they doing it on purpose? They were—they were keeping you separate for some reason?”

“I’m not telling you anything until you let me go!”

“Why would they want to do that?” Cornelia presses, voice strained and desperate. “What good could that possibly—”

“They’re not trying to do any good! I have no idea what the fuck it is they’re trying to do, but it’s certainly not _good_. Maybe you’re not as smart as I thought.”

“Don’t talk to her like—”

“What good do you think _you’re_ doing, hm? Taking the kids you care about and leaving the rest of them there to suffer. Taking me without my daemon, not letting me go back. That place is hell, but I’d rather be there with Cae than here with you lot.”

“Dan, we’re not trying to keep you captive. We just can’t take the children back there. And I don’t feel it’s safe to let you go out there alone in your condition—”

“I’m fine. I can take care of myself.”

“And we don’t doubt that,” Cornelia soothes.

“We just think we could do more good if we—”

“You and your bloody good. There is no good in this! I just want my daemon back! Just take me back to Caeneus.”

Phil’s head snaps to Dan, who tracks the motion and looks over at him for the first time, warily taking in Phil’s open shock and intense interest, but Phil can’t spare enough attention on that to care right now. If Phil remembers correctly, that’s a name for male daemons.

“I’m 18. You can’t just—this is kidnapping!”

“Which is it?” Phil says suddenly, breaking his silence despite himself. He needs to know now, needs to catch Dan’s eye and hold it, figure out if he can see it in some piece of him. 

“Which is what?”

“Are you an adult who can take care of himself or a child who’s been kidnapped?”

“That’s not even what that word means, you idiot!”

He knows Dan’s right, but he doesn’t care. He’s staring at Phil now, gaze scorching and terrifying, and resolutely fixed. Phil silently wills him to give him something, any sort of clue.

“Your daemon is safe for now,” he says finally, desperation rising.

“You can’t know—”

“As long as they have Cae there’s a chance you’ll come back looking for them. I assume those people want you back.” Just as he’d been hoping for, Dan’s eyes had flashed when Phil had said them, instead of her, as Martyn had assumed. He hadn’t dared try for him, but maybe if—

“I’m not gambling her life like that.”

Phil’s excitement comes crashing down around him. He’d heard what he’d wanted, assumed what he’d wanted, but of course Dan wasn’t like him. Of course not. He shrinks back into the corner, bringing a hand up to cup over Adra’s form, scrambling to climb out of his pocket.

“This isn’t up for discussion. Phil’s right, and it’s the best hope we’ve got. By now they’ve had time to recover and are probably expecting you to come back right away. The longer we wait, the more likely they are to think something’s gone wrong and you can’t come back. They might let their guard down.

“Phil will keep you company until we get back.” He ignores Phil’s huff of protest and Dan’s muttered curses. “It should just be a little over two days with the current in our favour. Then we’ll regroup, talk to the town council, and figure out a plan to try to get the rest of the kids and to get your daemon back.”

“I need to get her now.” 

He stomps his foot to emphasise the last word, arms crossed and face gone red in uneven patches. He looks like a toddler throwing a tantrum and Phil would normally roll his eyes, but he’s struck with a wave of pity instead. He can’t imagine standing in Dan’s place, Adra nowhere to be found. At this thought Adra slips through his grasp, shifting first into a snake to wind though his fingers and then taking up perch on his shoulder as an owl, keen eyes on Dan, claws pinching at Phil’s skin.

“How long have you been away from her at this point?”

“I don’t know. It was hard to—two weeks. Maybe three.”

“Then five days shouldn’t make too much of a difference.”

“Full offence, but you don’t know what the _fuck_ you’re talking about.”

“If you—”

“It’s never been kilometres we’ve been from each other. And it’s never been more than a month. What if we get delayed? What if there’s a maximum distance? What then?”

“We’ll be careful—”

“Just let me off! Let me go! I’ll go back myself.”

“No! I was charged with getting the kids back, and keeping them safe.”

“Well _I’m_ not safe without Cae.”

“You’re not safe going back there either, or out there on your own. This is the best we can do. This is what we’re doing.”

The calm in his voice is fraying, and Phil doesn’t want to know what will happen if it snaps. If Dan realises Martyn’s got no idea what he’s doing. Someone needs to do something, but Phil hasn’t got a single idea, and Cornelia looks just as lost.

There’s a sudden movement to his left, a weight pressing down on his shoulder as Adra takes off, landing on soft feet. Cat’s feet.

All of Dan’s attention is turned on the lion daemon in front of him. He’s finally gone still, but he looks more emotional than ever, eyes watering obviously even in the low light. Adra approaches tentatively, but the room is small and it only takes a few breaths for him to be standing right in front of Dan.

Phil desperately wants what happens in the following few seconds to be Dan’s fault. He wants it to have been Dan who reached out first, who broke the rules and took without asking what he never should have considered in the first place. But Phil sees, clear as anyone else in the room, Adra leaning forward, Adra butting his head into this complete stranger’s hand. Phil feels a rough jerk in his stomach and it feels a bit like being seasick and he thinks he might throw up, but instead he watches in wonder as Adra, rather than recoiling, leans forward into Dan’s foreign touch.

Phil certainly must be dreaming.

Except that isn’t better because his stupid dreams are prophetic and the only thing that feels worse than this actually happening is having to live through it happening again in the future.

Adra presses his head forward again, and Dan’s fingers slip through the fur of his mane. Dan looks a bit dazed too, as if his movement is unconscious, and Phil wants to shout at him. He wants to throw something. Dan’s not the one who should be reeling at this. His entire body feels like it’s buzzing.

Martyn’s searching gaze on the display sends a second wave of nausea through Phil.

“Does that help?” Martyn asks, even though he doesn’t really need to. 

Even Phil, consumed as he is by an indescribable…some sort of feeling that is far too complex for him to break down at the moment, can see how Dan’s body has slackened, how the subtle vibrating of his body has slowed.

“A bit.”

“Phil and Adra will look after you,” Martyn repeats. “We’ll reach home in two days now and take it from there. This isn’t up for further discussion.”

He leaves without another word, Cornelia following quickly behind with a determined look. Maybe she’s going to try to talk him out of it, maybe she’s going to extricate Phil from this mess, but for now she’s left him alone with this stranger. This stranger who still has his fingers tangled in Phil’s daemon’s fur.

“Please stop.”

He’d meant to sound stern, or angry, or at least sure, but instead it sounds like a question, weak and uncertain. Dan seems to take a moment to process the words, but when he does he withdraws his hand immediately, taking two swift steps to the side.

Adra looks back at Phil like he’s just remembered he’s in the room.

“I’m sorry—” Dan starts, but Phil cuts him off.

“Don’t talk. Neither of us wants to be here, but it doesn’t look like we have any choice. Unless you want to go jump off the side of the boat and swim back. Aim upstream. I won’t stop you.”

His voice doesn’t sound like his own and his words don’t either. But then it feels like he doesn't know himself anymore, at least the part of himself still standing far closer to Dan than he should.

He needs a distraction, something to do other than just exist in this tiny space with the two of them. He grabs his pack and roots through it, finally pulling out the second book Adra had talked him into packing, just in case.

“Here, take this. Read it. Or don’t, I don’t really care. But please just leave me alone for two seconds.”

Dan nods. He seems smaller now, drained of his anger and gnawing at his lower lip. He looks down at the book, then up again with a determined frown.

“Can I just apologise though for—”

“I’m not mad at you!” Phil snaps. 

He hadn’t wanted to admit it, because being mad at Dan feels simpler, feels _better_ than directing his anger where it really belongs. To Adra. To himself. But he knows Dan’s not to blame, that he’s suffering, and just trying to survive, and that he hadn’t been the one to reach out.

Adra had broken the taboo. And Phil still doesn’t know why.

“You’re not? You seem a little mad.”

“I’m mad at him.”

“Why?”

“Because he—He shouldn’t have touched you! Not without my permission, anyway.” Not at all, he thinks.

“Because of the taboo?”

“Because of—yes of course because of that!”

“I was raised by a…in unique circumstances, in a place that doesn’t observe the taboo, at least not to the extent your society does. I’m not trying to excuse my actions,” Dan hastens as Phil opens his mouth again, “just explain. But I’m sorry. Really. I’d never want to make you feel uncomfortable like that. I promise I won’t do it again without your permission.”

“Well you don’t have it, and you won’t.”

“Phil!” Adra breaks in, speaking for the first time since they’d entered the room and finally taking a step closer so he’s halfway between them. “Can’t you see how painful this is for him? You have my permission. It’s my body.”

“It’s _our_ body. You think I don’t feel it too?”

“Well you don’t seem to be able to feel the agony of being in the room with a human torn from their daemon—”

“Adra,” Dan interrupts, looking between the two of them in mild panic. “I appreciate your generosity, but I won’t be the cause of distancing someone else from their daemon like this. I’ll be fine. I’ve been away from Cae before.”

Phil very purposefully never fights with Adra in front of anyone else, and he feels Dan’s eyes on them, their current lack of discretion, worsening his already irrationally ballooned anger. 

“But you said it helps,” Adra presses.

Phil doesn’t like it. He’s usually the stubborn one, the one with his heels firmly dug into the mud, while Adra bends and flexes. But Adra’s will is Phil’s own, and he knows how far it can be pushed until it breaks.

“Not more than it seems to bother—It feels a little weird using each other’s names without an introduction, even if we know them. I’m Dan.” 

He holds out his hand to shake Phil’s but realises his mistake quickly enough and drops it when Phil doesn’t move to offer his own. The thought of touching Dan now, even in the more customary way, makes Phil’s skin crawl.

“Phil. And Adra,” he adds reluctantly when Dan glances toward the wayward daemon.

“Well. Terrible to meet you both, if you don’t mind me saying.”

Phil works his jaw, hoping his stifled grin isn’t too obvious.

“Likewise.”

“And oh!” he lets out an exclamation of clearly feigned excitement, holding out the book still in his hands. “The Hobbit. I’ve been meaning to read this. A tale of reluctant adventure. Not too on the nose at all. I’ll just, um…” he gestures over at the pile of blankets Phil had slept on, dragging them over to the corner of the room, as if a couple of metres will make a difference in their cramped quarters.

Still, Phil appreciates the attempt. He appreciates a lot about what Dan just did, and he feels a familiar fight waging within him, trying to keep his footing on loosening ground. But he’s not done being mad yet.

“Fine. I’m going for a walk.”

If he could, he’d leave Adra behind in this moment. He’s thought it before, but never quite so truthfully. Regardless, Adra trails after him, tied as he is to Phil’s movements. Phil tries to feel the familiar comfort in it, but all he can think about is whether Adra would rather stay with Dan.

It takes two laps for him to find a quiet corner, but when he does he settles himself on the deck, legs dangling over the side in between the railings. He’d never normally sit like this, afraid of deep water and the churn of the boat as he is, but right now he feels the need to press himself against the edge of his range.

Adra sits next to him, far but still within reach.

“You’re a lion,” Phil says first, as soon as he’s sure they’re alone, because it’s familiar ground and it feels easy, somehow, compared to the rest of it.

“I wanted to see how he’d react. We’re spending the next two days together; I thought it’d be easier to get it out of the way. He was sure to notice. People always do, you know that. And he didn’t seem bothered.”

“No, but—” 

“You did the same thing, didn’t you? You were testing him?”

“It’s not the same. You know it’s not.”

“Why don’t you ask me what you really want to know?”

Phil draws in a long, deep breath, letting the air fill his lung until it almost hurts, until it feels like it might pop his ribs right open. He lets it hiss out slow between his teeth before responding. “Why did you touch him?”

His voice is rawer than he’d hoped for and Adra takes a moment to consider his response, eyes hot on Phil the entire time.

“I can feel it. What it’s like for him being without his daemon. I mean not exactly, there’s a sense of…loss. Desolation. I guess humans can’t feel it, but I can, and I know Bragi and Hebe felt it too. Maybe we’re feeling what Cae’s feeling, I don’t know. But it’s unbearable, and it’s only getting worse. I just—I didn’t really mean to do it, I just suddenly found myself walking towards him. And it helped. So I just…” Adra shrugs and trails off. 

Phil can tell he’s frustrated, that he doesn’t quite know how to communicate why he feels the need to do this, as much as Phil can’t seem to understand it. They’ve never been this out of sync, and Phil thinks that’s the worst part of all this.

“What does it feel like?”

“I said. Kind of like the feeling when we go too far apart, but less sharp and more—”

“No. To touch him.”

“Oh.” Adra stands and shakes his mane out before setting to pacing up and down the deck

“Because for me it feels like I’m going to be sick to my stomach. You know that, don’t you?”

“No, I don’t. I think if you took a moment to think about it, you’d find that it wasn’t nausea—”

“If it feels different for us then you don’t know how it makes me feel. You don’t feel nauseous?”

“No. I don’t. A little…” he cocks his head to the side, tail twitching back and forth as he considers, “unnerving, maybe. Thrilling. Different.”

“You _like_ it?”

“I don’t know if it’s that exactly. It didn’t feel bad. It didn’t feel particularly good either. It just felt like a touch. Like if you were touching me, just a little different.”

“It doesn’t feel like when I touch you.”

“A little different,” Adra repeats, tail twitching quicker now.

“I don’t understand how it can feel different for us. It doesn’t make sense.”

“Maybe how I feel is how I feel and how you feel is how you think you’re supposed to feel.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Phil asks, pressing his body further into the bars, the skin on his forehead starting to smart as it’s pulled taut.

“You rely more on how you think other people might react to something than how you actually feel about it. How we feel about it.”

“I don’t—”

“If you don’t want to talk about it, that’s fine, but I’m not going to pretend it isn’t true. We should go back.” He gets up, turning back to look at Phil over his shoulder when Phil doesn’t move. “Am I still not allowed to touch Dan?”

“I’m not going to tell you what to do. You’re your own person, apparently. Just know that you’ll be making me feel sick if you do. If you’re happy with that, then fine.”

“If you think that’s what I want then I don’t know what to say to you.”

Phil watches Adra stalk down the deck, waiting until the last possible moment to follow after him. They’ve fought before, increasingly over the past few months and especially over the issue that lays at the heart of this that Phil won’t let either of them speak aloud, but he can’t seem to shake the sickly feeling that settles in his stomach for the rest of the night that this is something new. Something they won’t be able to agree on.

* * *

Phil leaves the confines of his small room very rarely over the next two days. While it had been exactly how he’d chosen to spend the first several days of the journey, it feels markedly different now. Adra respects Phil’s wishes, however sulkily, and doesn’t touch Dan again, but even Phil has to admit he can see the difference between Dan when he’s spent time crowded close to Adra and after Phil’s gone out to get food or talk to Martyn or Cornelia. Dan never looks particularly well—and this Phil can hardly blame him for—but when it’s just the three of them lined up on Phil’s bed, Adra in the middle, pointedly touching neither of them, a little colour comes back to Dan’s cheeks.

Phil, on the other hand, is being driven slowly to the ends of his patience. Dan can’t leave the room much for obvious reasons, and even then it’s only in the dead in the night and escorted by Phil. He could probably get away with people assuming his daemon is small and hidden somewhere in his clothes for a bit, from afar, but now that the mission is over and they’re just waiting to get home, people are restless and looking for trouble to stir up.

Phil had tried to argue for telling people Dan’s a witch and his daemon’s just off sending a message, but that was vetoed quickly. Dan is a man, of course, so he can’t be a witch, and besides, it’s not like people are much easier around witches. Boats are small, cramped places where it doesn’t do well to allow any distrust or animosity to form. Privately, Phil thinks that Martyn’s just too proud, and overcompensating because this is the first serious job their father’s given him, and he’s afraid of failing. He doesn’t think this argument would go over well, though.

Cornelia does try to relieve him of his duty every so often, aware of the inverse relationship between Dan’s calmed trembling and Phil’s new eye twitch. She’ll come into their room, claiming Martyn needs Phil for something, or that he should go stretch his legs, and that she’ll keep Dan company. Whenever he comes back, it seems her company has had conflicting results. Dan seems calmer, less on edge, but the shaking of his hands is always back, and Adra always rushes right to his side, close as possible without touching, Dan leaning slightly into the heat.

Cornelia tries to politely not watch, but Phil knows she sees it, and hates that too. There’s not much he doesn’t hate at the moment, actually.

On his rare breaks from his new charge, Phil usually goes to the canteen for a coffee, and sometimes one of the pastries the cook makes. A few times he’s run into the kids there, always together under the watchful eye of Martyn or Cornelia or another crew member. As time passes they don’t seem quite as shaken, at least as far as Phil can tell from their bright voices and loud laughter, but he does see the way their daemons cling closer to their bodies, ferrets draped across shoulders or snakes wound tight around arms.

Phil casts an eye towards Adra, sat off to the side in his favoured public form, a red squirrel. Inconspicuous and common, it’s everything they used to scoff at when discussing other daemon’s forms. Phil and Adra, around the age of seven or so, had sworn an oath that they’d never settle as something as boring or unimaginative as a dog or a cat or a mouse. 

They’d pored over countless animal encyclopaedias when they were younger, Phil reading aloud facts about the animals, his voice fumbling through scientific names as Adra shifted and ran or flew around the room. There’d been a month one summer they spent almost every daylight hour down by the river, Phil calling out different marine animals from an old textbook his aunt had found for him while Adra changed and splashed about, leaping out of the water when he could for Phil to get a better look. Back then, it seemed impossible that they would ever want Adra to settle, to give up the joy of finding a new form to take on, of pushing the boundaries of what they could be. Adra had even managed to change into a unicorn once, rainbow tail and all, but when they’d showed his mother she’d forbade them from taking on imaginary forms ever again. 

Now, Phil wishes it would happen already, just to have one less thing marking him as different. He knows Adra still treasures his ability to shift, and Phil secretly wonders if that isn’t what’s holding them back. He can feel the fear sometimes, building up like bile in the back of his own throat, that Adra gets when he’s spent too long as a squirrel, suddenly unsure he hasn’t settled without noticing. As soon as they’re alone he’ll begin shifting rapidly, into increasingly impractical, uncommon forms, at least in their dull and crowded UK. Ostrich. Gazelle. Giraffe, if there’s room, or even an elephant.

Phil’s not sure if it’s just his imagination, but he can feel it most acutely then, what it’s like to take on those forms. The stretch, the power, the speed, the grace. Stuck in his own gangly, uncoordinated body, he can’t imagine what it’s like to be able to feel that firsthand. What it’d be like to give that up. Then he can understand Adra’s reluctance. Remember his own, long pressed down, tucked away with the rest of his old toys he’d outgrown years ago.

And then there’s that girl and her daemon. Phil still doesn’t quite think her daemon is female, but there’s something…off, for lack of a better word, about him. Something that feels a bit like a phantom last stair in the pit of his stomach, a far off echoing click. It’s not something he’s experienced often, so he maybe stares a bit too openly. The girl notices and stares back with a steely, practised glare. Then she catches sight of Adra and her face softens a bit, turning to whisper something to her daemon, now a black-capped chickadee perched on her shoulder.

Phil scoops Adra up and makes his way out of the canteen hastily.

The ship is only half a day away from home now, if that. He can make it. This nightmare will be over soon.

When he gets back to their room he can feel Dan’s aggravation hanging in the air, chafing against his own. Adra moves to sit beside him on the floor and Phil tries not to make a comment about it, snapping open his book instead.

He gets through about ten pages without absorbing a single word before he closes it again with a smack. Dan looks up, startled, a frown buried into all of the lines of his face. It’s expressive, his face, and he has a hard time hiding his emotions, Phil’s learned. His many, loud emotions. When he’s upset he sulks and snaps and prods, face drawn and sharp. When he smiles, his whole face transforms with it as well, eyes brightening, forehead scrunching, and dimples popping out in full display. He’d made the mistake of pointing them out once, when Dan was smiling at the book in his lap, and they’d retreated immediately.

Now he’s not smiling, and Phil is mad about it all of a sudden. He watches Adra’s tail twitching in the air, seeming to flick closer to Dan’s thigh every time.

“I never would have left without Adra.”

Dan puts down his book and rearranges the blanket in his lap before looking up and stepping into Phil’s invitation without hesitation.

“Yeah, well, I didn’t have much of a choice, did I? Your brother raided the place and kidnapped me. Plus I was drugged.”

“He didn’t kidnap you; he saved you _from_ kidnappers.”

“The way I see it, he’s done the same as them, except worse, because now I’m farther away from Cae.”

“We’re going back. We’re going to save her and—”

“Them.” Dan bites. 

“What?”

Phil can feel the blood rush from his face and knows he must look aghast, but he still doesn’t quite understand the way Dan looks at him. Phil had used that pronoun earlier, but it had been meant to convey uncertainty. A question. If Dan were trying to tell him something like that, something he clearly knows Phil would understand, wouldn’t he have said something more definitive? Either way, Phil’s not going to be the one to get it wrong this time. 

“They—do you mean the other kids?”

“No. I—I mean them too, if they’re still there. But I just meant Cae.”

“Well… but…” A sudden thought occurs to Phil and it sends a violent shiver through his body. “You don’t…” Dan looks up, bottom lip trembling slightly before he tugs it in between his teeth. “Do you have more than one daemon?” 

Suddenly, Dan is laughing, an unsteady, slightly maniacal laugh. Phil instinctively leans back, bristling when Adra shoots him a glare and shifts his weight closer to Dan.

“No,” Dan gasps when he’s mostly controlled himself, “I don’t have two daemons. They just—nevermind, you wouldn’t get it, I don’t think. Forget I said that.”

“Fine, forget I came in here at all.”

“Fine.”

Adra drags his feet as he leaves, forcing Phil to slow his dramatic storm out and taking a bit of the edge off it, sharpening Phil’s anger in the process. He moves up to the front of the ship, taking up his new post pressed between the bars of the railing, determined to sit here until he can see home again. 

They don’t talk, but a few minutes in Adra pushes something into Phil’s head, a memory of a therapist they went to see once when they were younger who had suggested that when Phil felt overwhelmed by something he could calm himself down by trying to relax one muscle at a time in his body, until he’d gone through them all.

Phil rolls his eyes and scrunches his shoulders up towards his ears in defiance, until Martyn comes to find him to tell him that there’d been a change in plans and they were docking tonight to pick up some cargo on the way back, and they wouldn’t be home until tomorrow morning. And shouldn’t he be getting back to Dan?

It takes Phil what he’d estimate to be five minutes to move all the way through his body, clenching then relaxing each muscle in turn, and another couple to trust his vocal cords with the words he feels building up in his throat. People bustle around them, but no one seems to be paying them any attention, and Phil feels past caring anyway.

Private moments, always a given between them, had become incredibly rare since Dan showed up. Phil can feel the strain of it, among the clamouring of everything else wearing at his nerves. It’s a little like the feeling of spending hours or days on end in the company of others, the fizzling of that fuse always in the background until you can finally find some time to be alone. Only in this case, Phil wants to be alone with someone else.

Only that someone else seems to want to spend all of their time with another person. Someone that’s not him. Not _them_. Even growing up, when Phil’d had best friends and Adra had been close with their daemons, it had never been like this.

Phil doesn’t know what this is.

“You like him.” 

Adra shifts, finally, though it’s rather useless at this point. Plenty of people have already seen him and his mane. His tortoise voice is rough and slow, a clear aggravation tactic. “Yes.” 

“You want us to be friends?”

He pauses before responding, but it might just be his tortoise-y brain. “I think you would be friends if you’d just get over yourself.”

“Are you friends?”

“I suppose. I still don’t know him that well.”

“Why do you like him?” 

Adra takes a while to respond, and this time Phil can tell he’s measuring his response carefully, can feel him deciding what to say and what to hold back. He changes to a squirrel and climbs up Phil’s arm, coming to rest on his shoulder. Phil stays very still.

“He’s easy to talk to.”

Phil catches the gasp halfway out of his mouth, breath stuttering conspicuously despite his efforts. “When do you talk to him?”

“When you’re asleep, mostly. He finds it hard to sleep without Cae. Sometimes when you’re just tuning us out.”

Phil had always assumed that when he was asleep, Adra was too.

“What do you talk about?”

Adra pauses again, tail twitching and tickling the skin on his neck. Half of Phil wants to shove him off his shoulder. The proximity feels too intimate for this conversation, for the state of them at the moment. But this thought, that Adra should be putting any more space in between them, is just as horrifying. 

Phil leans his forehead against the railing, eyes closed, breathing in the crisp evening air, and waits.

“I don’t know…if I should tell you. They’re things he might want to tell you himself.” 

Or not want to tell you. It hangs unsaid between them, but they never did need words.

“Usually telling a person’s daemon something is the same as telling them.”

“He’s just nice, Phil! He doesn’t judge me and doesn’t think twice about me being male and we just…talk about normal things. What his childhood was like, what ours was like—”

“You tell him things about me?”

“I can’t exactly talk about myself without talking about you, can I?”

“So you can’t tell me any of his precious secrets, but you go blabbing our entire life to a perfect stranger?”

“You’re ridiculous, you know that? I cannot understand why you’re so determined to hate him.”

“Oh, go back to your boyfriend, then.” The second the words are out of Phil’s mouth he realizes his mistake. Mistakes. His regret is two pronged and prodding him in the back emphatically.

“Phil,” Adra breathes into Phil’s neck. 

Part of Phil had been expecting Adra to actually leave, even though he can’t, obviously. He doesn’t respond, just draws in a sharp breath and keeps his eyes steadily away from Adra.

“You know it’s not like that.”

“I don’t know what it is like, though.”

Adra rubs his nose against Phil’s throat. “I know. I don’t either. I’m just…trying not to worry about it too much for once.”

“What’s that like?”

“It’s good, actually.”

Neither of them says anything else, but Adra stays settled in the crook of his neck until Phil finally gets up, once he’s lost the feeling in his legs.

He should be getting back to Dan, afterall. Adra brushes his tail against his face in a twitch of approval.

* * *

Despite their tentative truce earlier, Adra is restless that evening, shifting every minute or so, first a rabbit nibbling at the corner of Phil’s blanket, then a lion, larger than normal, pacing the length of the room and back in four long strides, then a woodpecker, tapping at the wall behind Phil’s head.

“Would you settle down?” Phil asks without looking up from his book. 

He reaches out a hand for Adra to perch on, as he likes to do in this form, but he only lands for a moment before shifting again, turning into a red panda, slamming Phil’s hand down onto the bed under the weight of his body. It doesn’t hurt much, the bed soft enough under them to absorb most of the blow, but it has the intended effect anyway.

“Hey! What was that for?” Phil chides, yanking his hand back and shutting his book loudly.

“Bored,” Adra whines, rolling over in a clumsy little somersault.

“Find something to do then. I’m trying to read.”

“That’s what’s boring.”

“Not to me. Shoosh, please.”

“You’ve already read that book twice. Why don’t you talk?”

“To who?”

“Me? Or Dan?”

They both look up slowly to see Dan sitting in the corner on top of a scratchy old blanket, trying very hard to look like he’s focusing on the book in front of him. Phil feels a flush of shame at being caught out arguing with his daemon, again, and in such an immature way. Then something else about the exchange occurs to him.

“Don’t you think it’s odd that Adra hasn’t settled yet?”

Dan looks startled, probably at being addressed directly, or perhaps at the question that has already answered itself in its asking. Phil doesn’t have the heart to phrase it any other way. Adra, a woodpecker again, pecks him sharply on the ear and Phil shoos him away. 

“No? Cae hasn’t.”

“Really?”

“Nope. Cae doesn’t change as much anymore, but still every once in a while.”

“Yes, well, that’s a little odd too, but you’re only 18. It’s late, but it’s not…” Phil trails off, unsure of how to finish. Worrying? That’s probably what his mum would say. Indicative of a resistance to growing up, his dad has said. But Dan just shrugs.

“I mean I guess I don’t really know when a normal time would be, but we’re still young, yeah?”

“For witches maybe. For humans, we’re not quite that young.”

“Well, say it is. Why does it matter?”

“Just does.”

“Is this another one of your mysterious, very important rules that you can’t actually explain?”

Phil doesn’t feel the need to respond and they fall silent again. Dan is the one to break it this time.

“Do you have any idea what Adra will settle as?”

Phil freezes under the weight of the question, asked in such a light tone. He doesn’t know where to start, how to conceal his fear that Adra will never settle, that they’ll go on being doubly bizarre for the rest of their lives. His equally strong, if not worse, fear that Adra _will_ settle, but in a form that will stop letting Phil evade notice. He’s not an idiot. He knows the forms Adra favours, and they’re all loud in one way or another. They’ve all got a mane or bright colours or distinct patterns that don’t let Phil hide behind uncertainty.

“I don’t really think that’s any of your business.”

“I was just trying to make simple small talk. Not everything is the end of the world, you know.”

Feeling properly chided, Phil backtracks. 

“He seems to like this form a lot,” Phil says, hoisting the wriggling red panda up by his hind legs in a way that he hopes looks disarmingly silly and irresistibly cute. “What about you? Do you have any guesses about Cae’s settled form?” 

Phil almost instantly regrets returning the question. It’s something most kids ask each other up until their daemon gets close to settling, but it’s still a fairly intimate thing. Something you chat about aimlessly, talk about what would be cool or powerful or impressive. But you don’t normally share what you privately think is the truth. Before your daemon’s settled is the last time you have a chance at that particular form of privacy, of keeping the shape and nature of your soul as a thing of your own. 

Whatever daemons do or don’t tell you about the reality of a person, their settled forms do hold unshakable significance in their society.

He’s not sure if he wants to know Dan’s honest answer, or if he wants Dan to be willing to share it.

“Probably something that can fly. They—we like flying.”

“You’ve flown?” Phil’s caution is momentarily forgotten in the face of this news.

“Some, mostly when I was younger. My, um, my mother’s a witch.” 

Suddenly, things start making sense. A lot of sense actually. Dan continues his story, unaware of Phil’s growing revelation.

“She would take me up with her. Even if I can’t fly anymore, Cae spends a lot of time as a bird or a bat. I think that’d be something that would have to be part of it.”

“So…like a witch’s daemon.”

“Yeah, I guess. Plenty of people who aren’t witches have bird daemons though.”

“But not daemons they can travel away from.”

“Are you calling me a witch?” Dan laughs when he sees Phil’s blush. “Don’t worry, you’re not the first. But no, I can’t do magic or fly, or go far from Cae without at least some pain. Trust me, if I’d shown any real signs my mum would have been all over it. Boys aren’t supposed to be witches. It’s a whole thing.”

“Boys aren’t supposed to have boy daemons either.”

Phil can’t believe he said that out loud. They stare at each other for a moment, waiting, it seems, for the other to respond. To refute.

“Are they not supposed to, or is it just less common?” Dan asks finally, voice steady and warm.

Phil cannot even begin to try to answer that. If he knew that—well, a lot of things would be easier. “Same question.”

“Why are you so set on me being a witch?”

“I’m just pointing out the similarities I see. Why are you so set on Adra being normal?”

Another question he hadn’t meant to ask. He holds his breath as he waits for Dan to respond. Adra, clearly disgruntled, transforms into a lion and rolls over Phil, crushing him beneath his body.

“I’m not set on it. I just think he is.”

Phil desperately wants to press, to dig into his words and uncover the meaning, the sincerity of them. But he doesn’t have the energy or the trust left to spare on this matter, so he just nods and looks back down at his book, hoping Adra’s learned his lesson about trying to force the two of them to talk.

* * *

Footnotes:

  1. Cae pronounced like the word ‘see’ [ ▲ ]



**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading! The next chapter will be out on Saturday. [Tumblr post here](https://phanomeheart.tumblr.com/post/611058499788619776/the-secluded-glade-chapter-26-t-82k-169k).


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a note that there will now be 7 chapters instead of 6. Hope you enjoy this one!

Luck seems to finally be on Phil’s side the next morning. By the time he’s up and dressed and out onto the deck, he already recognises the the section of the river they’ve reached and knows they’re only about half an hour from home. It’s pathetic, but what he’s looking forward to most is hugging his mum. And a nice shower and some personal space. But first a hug from his mum for sure. 

Dan was already up and dressed when Phil woke up, and he follows after Phil wordlessly as he goes out onto the deck, peering out at the banks as if they might tell him something, but as far as Phil knows Dan’s never been here before. He’d mentioned one night before bed that he’s from farther south, though not exactly where, and Phil hadn’t asked. It’s hard to spend three full days cooped up in the same tiny room with someone else without learning anything about them, after all, despite Phil’s best efforts. Dan gets especially chatty right before falling asleep, possibly because he’s learned that’s when Phil’s the most likely to respond.

“It’s just about thirty minutes now,” Phil says, and Dan just nods.

Technically, Dan shouldn’t be out here at all. Phil should tell him to go back into their room, but he can’t bring himself to care at the moment. A riot isn’t likely to break out at this point, even if someone does notice what’s missing. Mostly, Phil has no interest in going back into that horrible, stuffy room, and his mood has brightened enough that he feels bad leaving Dan without Adra, who’s perched now on the railing between the two of them, sharp hawk eyes scanning the horizon.

After a couple of minutes, the group of kids come stampeding out onto deck, followed by an extremely exasperated looking Cornelia. She winks at Phil and Bragi flits over to have a quick, hushed conversation with Adra. Phil flicks through Adra’s mind briefly, picking up the gist of Bragi checking in on them and asking about Dan.

Dan, meanwhile, is standing stock still, staring resolutely out at the water as the kids climb on the railing and laugh and shout and jostle each other. They seem shockingly _fine_ for children who had just been taken from their families and subjected to God knows what, but his mum had always told him how resilient children are. Mostly after he’d tripped over something yet again and scraped or bumped or bruised something else, but still. He’s sure they’re far from fine, sure there’s trauma to unpack there, but overall they just seem…normal. Happy and excited and ready to move forward. Phil hopes they can. 

He glances at Dan, but averts his eyes when Dan catches them and frowns. 

As the kids continue to laugh and brag about what they’re going to do when they get home, trying to top each other with extravagant reunion scenarios, Phil watches them watch Dan, their glances wary and fleeting. It’s not like Phil expected them to be best friends. There’s about six years between Dan and the rest of them, and he hasn’t even asked about them at all since the first morning. Still, Phil would have expected some sort of acknowledgement between them. 

Instead, Dan just grows more and more tense, and eventually Phil calls to Cornelia over to say he’s going to the canteen to get a last cup of coffee and ask if she wants any.

“I’m all set, thanks Phil. Good to see you out and about, Dan.”

Dan just nods, but he does crack the smallest of smiles, and Phil can’t help but brighten a bit at seeing it. Adra laughs softly in his ear, now a squirrel again on his shoulder. 

When they reach the canteen it’s blessedly empty, just a couple of workers off shift. They’re exhausted enough to barely spare Dan and Phil a second glance as they walk past and Phil can hear Dan release a long breath when they get to the far side of the room. Phil pours them both a coffee, the stress Dan must be feeling heavy on his mind. As awful as it is for Phil to walk into a new place, waiting for the sour looks and incredulous second glances when people notice Adra, it must be so much worse waiting for people to notice your daemon isn’t there at all.

Phil nods at the door and they make their way out to the stern, which is much less crowded. Dan nurses his coffee in silence, and for once Phil wishes he’d say something. What’s going through his head? Is he excited to be finally making landfall, to be one step closer to going back for his daemon, or is the furrow on his brow an angry one? He’d been livid about going back to Rawtenstall at first, and for all Phil knows Dan’s currently calculating how long it would take to jump off the ship and swim back to Cae.

He’s just about to open his mouth and say something—probably something idiotic—when the ship’s horn blows, making both of them jump.

Home!

Phil rushes back to their cabin to grab his things, stuffing the book Dan had been reading and the clothes he had been in when they found him at the top of his pack. Dan’s barely made it through the door when Phil rushes back out. 

Usually not one for crowds, he elbows his way up to the prow, paying zero attention to whether or not Dan is managing to keep up. Adra is a mouse tucked into Phil’s collar and he nips at Phil’s earlobe gently, telling him to slow down and not lose Dan. He’s excited too though, Phil can feel it in the vibrations of his little body against his neck.

Once they’ve docked Phil pays no heed to Martyn shouting after him to help unload. He’s got his stuff on his back, and it’s not like he’s a crew member. There are people who are paid to do that. His job was done days ago.

He runs as much of the way back home as he can muster, tripping and stumbling in his haste, Adra several paces ahead of them, a gazelle far more graceful than Phil, but probably far less graceful than actual gazelles. He’d normally be mortified to let someone else see him like this, but he can’t seem to care. Dan does a decent job of keeping up, running a bit slower but tripping less, until Phil comes to a stop outside his door, panting to catch his breath for just a moment.

The door opens before he gets a chance and his mum is there, ushering them in with a hand on his elbow. He’s just about lean forward for his hug when something over his shoulder catches his mum’s eye.

“And who is this?” she asks, voice cau and bright, peering over at Dan. He can see her measuring the gap between Dan and Adra with her eyes, comparing it to the approximate distance between Adra and himself.

He wants to shove Dan at least two steps away.

Adra knocks him lightly with his horns, but he moves closer to Phil in the process and doesn’t back away again.

Phil waits, expecting Dan to introduce himself, but he’s playing shy all of a sudden, arms clasped behind his back. Apparently Phil has to do everything himself.

“This is Dan. We found him with the other children and brought him with us.” Phil pauses to let Dan interject with his usual protest that he was kidnapped, but he appears to be on his best behaviour, smiling thinly, nodding toward Phil’s mum.

Phil can see his mum’s calculating as her eyes continue to dart between the two of them, then back at Adra in the middle. The look sets his skin prickling, and instead he fixes his eyes on Belenus. He’s waiting for the ball to drop, and Belenus’ caution tells him it’s not far off. 

“Hi Dan, it’s nice to meet you. You’re welcome to stay with us as long as you need. Can we help you get back to your family?”

“Thank you Mrs Lester, that’s very kind of you. I think we’re staying the night, but then we’ll head back out first thing tomorrow. There’s, uh, something I have to go back and get.”

“Surely you don’t mean back to that awful place? Oh love, no. Phil told me all about it from his dreams and it sounded horrific. What in the world could you have left there that would be worth going back for?”

He can see the moment she realises Dan’s daemon is missing, and knows Dan’s seen it too from the stiffening at his side and the slight lean of Adra’s body back towards Dan. His mum looks to him for some sort of explanation, but of course he has none to give, so he just gives his head a quick shake.

“Well, ah, in that case, you’re more than welcome to stay here for the night, and I assume Martyn is making arrangements to go find your—ah, to finish your journey?”

“Yes ma’am.” 

She just about melts at the formality, and Phil turns his head to not get caught out rolling his eyes.

“You can call me Kath. I’m a bit of a hugger,” his mum adds after a beat, voice cracking around the edges, “would you mind if I gave you a hug?”

“Oh, um, no. No, that—sure.” Dan takes a step forward and sticks his arms out stiffly, just a bit so his hand cup the air in front of his hips.

Phil’s mum isn’t deterred, though, and she pulls him into a big hug, arms wrapped tightly around him. Dan slumps into it almost instantly, seeming to shrink at least a few centimetres as he hunches over to let Phil’s mum support his weight. It’s a hug Phil’s received countless times, so he knows how it feels, like safety and warmth and love pressed tight all around you. For a wild moment he wants to rip Dan away and claim what’s rightfully his. This wasn’t quite the longest he’s ever gone without seeing his mum, but it’s up there and it had been a dangerous journey, even if he and Adra hadn’t ever been in any danger directly.

Most importantly, he hasn’t gotten his hug yet.

Adra shifts to his woodpecker form and lands heavily on Phil’s shoulder to give a sharp peck on the back of his head. Phil tries to shake him off, but he digs his talons in, so Phil shifts his attention, begrudgingly, to his mother’s daemon. 

Belenus fully embodies capybara energy. Daemons tend to flock to him and rest alongside him whenever they’re nearby. Phil’s surprised Adra hasn’t already changed into a snake to wind around his neck, or draped across his back as a sugar glider, as usual, but Belenus is standing alone now. He obviously doesn’t usually touch any other people, aside from Phil’s dad, or Phil or Martyn on extremely rare occasions, but he is usually in contact with the other person’s daemon. 

Except now he can’t do that.

Is he as distressed by the lack of daemon as Adra seemed to be when they’d first met Dan? Or maybe he’s giving Dan space to interact with him on his own.

This thought sends a jolt through Phil, opening up a whole new possibility. He watches more closely now, eager to see if Belenus will try to touch Dan. Maybe if someone else’s daemon tries to reach out for Dan it doesn’t have to mean anything that Adra did it.

And if anyone would, it would probably be Belenus.

He stays placidly at Phil’s mum’s side, though, keeping a respectful distance. It’s not quite as obvious as it had been with Bragi and Hebe, but he’s got the same edge of discomfort to him, standing farther away that he normally would. As far as he can.

Just the opposite of Adra.

The hug just keeps going, and as Phil turns his gaze to look at Dan’s hands clutching at the fabric of his mum’s shirt, he’s suddenly hit with the realization that this might be the first time anyone has touched Dan in quite a while. Phil’s almost certain that no one on the boat touched Dan, considering the distance their daemons kept between them. Aside from Martyn and the others bringing him on board. And Adra of course.

Before that…well, Phil can hardly imagine the monsters keeping the children in that horrible place were physically affectionate. 

It’s a bit of a foreign concept, and it takes a while for the full weight of it to work through Phil’s brain. He’s experienced what it’s like to lack human contact during his first few weeks at uni before he made friends and they got comfortable with each other. But he could come home on the weekends and hug his mum and shove Martyn and get clapped on the back by his father. And, of course, through all of it, he had Adra. Anytime Phil felt the physical, sucking ache for touch starting to creep in, he could just reach out and touch his daemon.

Without need for a second thought, Adra would shift into something soft and small and burrow into his chest, chirping against his neck, warm and real and there right next to him. Or something large and strong to envelop Phil, to make him feel small and cherished and protected. 

His whole body radiates with a violent shiver as he considers what it must be like to have to go without that. Even when they’re fighting, he and Adra touch every day.

“Phil, love,” his mum says, in the familiar tone she uses to call Phil back from a daydream, “would you go make us a cup of tea? Dan and I are going to get to know each other.”

Another shiver courses through Phil. He knows what that means. When he was younger and his mum’s friends came over she would ask him this question when she wanted him to get out of their hair. Go make a cup of tea meant, ‘take at least thirty minutes to make it.’

And he still hadn’t gotten his hug. 

He trudges to the kitchen, not bothering to set the kettle to boil yet, pulling out his book instead and flipping it open to where he’d left off last night. He only gets a few sentences in before he shuts it again, opting to watch Adra instead, curled up as a squirrel on top of the table, eyes shut and breathing rhythmic. But Phil knows better than to be tricked by that.

“What do you suppose they’re talking about?” Phil asks.

Adra cracks one eye to look at him, the closes it again. “You could ask Dan, but that would require having an actual conversation with him.”

Phil opens his book back up with a huff, eyes tracking across the page as he fumes silently, thoughts loud enough to batter at the edge of Adra’s mind. Who was Dan to waltz into Phil’s house, Phil’s life, steal his mum, steal his space, and try to steal his daemon? It’s not like he ever expressed any gratitude, or even any desire to be in any of their company. He’d wanted to leave immediately and they should have let him. He shouldn’t be away from his daemon and Phil shouldn’t have to put up with him in his face 24/7. It was enough to drive anyone mad.

“You’ve changed your tune from earlier this morning. You seemed pretty eager to help him out then.”

“Shut up.”

Adra just shrugs and rolls onto his side. Phil had loved animals since he was a kid, and it had always delighted him especially to see such human gestures come from the bodies of animals, though daemons weren’t animals of course. Now he wishes Adra would act a bit more like a real squirrel.

He opens his book again and resigns himself to another twenty minutes of restless reading, but his mum’s voice breaks his train of thought earlier than he was expecting.

“Phil! Where’s that tea I asked for?”

Their usual code that it’s okay for Phil to come back in rankles now.

“One minute!” he calls back, setting the kettle to boil and taking the mugs out as noisily as he can get away with without actually breaking anything.

He realises as he fills the cups that he doesn’t actually know how Dan takes his tea. He’d never asked, and Dan had never commented when Phil had brought it back after one of his rare wanders out of the room. But surely if Dan hadn’t liked the way Phil made it he would have said something. Phil has never known Dan to hold back on voicing his dissent.

Except around Phil’s mum. He adds an extra heaping spoon of sugar and less milk than normal.

When he gets into the sitting room, his mum and Dan are sitting on the same couch, his mum’s hand resting on Dan’s knee. Phil sets their cups down with a clatter. He sits in a chair across from them, sloshing some tea down his front when he tries to take a sip. His mum’s gaze is intent on him.

“So Phil, Dan tells me you’re going to go back with him to help him find his daemon.”

“I didn’t—” Dan starts, but Phil’s in no mood to let him finish.

“I’m not!”

His mum’s face glances between them quickly, then turns back to frown at Phil. “He said Martyn promised to help him find Cae once they brought the children back safely.”

“Yeah, Martyn, not me. They don’t need me anymore, they already know where it is. I haven’t had any more of those stupid dreams.” 

That isn’t strictly true. He’d dreamt of the clearing and the bat and the hand twice more. But no one needs to know that. The dreams usually only stop once the thing has happened and he has no intention of going back there.

“They do need you though. Dan told me that you and Adra—”

“Anything he told you is a lie!” Phil shouts, standing abruptly enough to knock over his mug and unsettle Adra from his shoulder. “We don’t know anything about him; why should we trust him? It’s not exactly normal to be able to go this far from your daemon, is it?”

The ensuing silence rings in Phil’s ears, and he decides it’s better to try to outrun it than to try to fill it. He’ll just keep making it worse. He hasn’t got anything to say that his mum wants to hear. She and Dan can have a lovely tea party without him. He feels four years old all over again and jealous that his mum has friends other than him, but at the moment there doesn’t seem to be room in his body for anything other than rage, so he lets it carry him up to his room and then slams his door for good measure.

He’s only allowed a couple of minutes to stew before he hears the expected knock on his door. What he doesn’t expect is for his mum to wrap her arms around him as soon as he opens the door.

“What—”

“First things first, I never got my Phil hug. You’ve been gone so long, and I was so worried.”

As always, she doesn’t let go first, letting him pick when to end the hug. It’s a long one.

When he does finally let go, she moves over to his bed without speaking, patting the space next to her. He sits on the edge, deciding to break the silence first.

“Mum, please don’t yell at me; I can’t handle that right now.”

“What makes you think I’m going to yell at you?”

“Because I was rude to Dan. And you.”

“It was a poor display of the manners I know you have. But I also know you don’t act that way for nothing.” She waits for a moment, but Phil doesn’t feel like offering an explanation to that. “Why did you say those things about Dan?”

“Because they’re true.”

She does what she used to do when he was a kid, waiting out his lie patiently. He did get his stubbornness from somewhere.

“And because I don’t want to go back,” he says finally.

Belenus settles onto the bed next to them and Adra worms his way into the soft fur of his back, burying his nose in it. Watching the action makes Phil want to reach forward for another hug, and while he knows his mother wouldn’t question it, he also knows they have things to discuss and she won’t let him avoid it forever.

“That’s understandable. It was a lot to ask of you to go in the first place. I know how much those dreams scared you. You were very brave to go the first time.”

He doesn’t really want these mollifying words at the moment. He’s still spoiling for a fight, even if it has to be with his mum. He wants someone else to get angry. He’s been alone in his anger ever since Dan’s outburst his first morning on the boat. Maybe Dan had transferred his rage to Phil somehow. Phil would love to give it back, but four days of barbed comments hasn’t seemed to do the trick.

“I don’t see why I have to go.” 

“Of course you do, Phil. Don’t be a brat.”

“I’m not a brat! I’m not a kid, I’m 22, and I think I’m allowed to decide for myself what I want to do.”

“Dan needs you, child. Even in the hour I was talking with him I could see the effects of him being away from the two of you.”

“But _why_? Why does being near Adra help him at all? Adra won’t touch him—” he doesn’t feel the need to say that it’s only because Phil forbade it, and suspects Dan told her that anyway, “and I don’t—we don’t really talk or anything. Why can’t Cornelia go and keep him company? Or literally anyone else?”

His mother lets him finish his rant before leveling him with a look. It’s one he knows well.

“I don’t know why, Phil. We could spend days walking him around town to see if anyone else has the same effect, but right now as far as we know you and Adra are the only ones who can help him feel better right now.” 

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

He doesn’t know how to get her to say it without saying it himself. He desperately doesn’t want her to say it, but he doesn’t want her to not say it just to spare him, either. He wants it to not be true, so untrue that it doesn’t even have words.

“I’m not—” he chokes on the rest of the words, looking up at her desperately.

“Alright.”

“I don’t know why this is happening.”

“I know, child.”

“I don’t want it to.”

“I know that too. But it is, and Dan’s hurting too. Sometimes other people are relying on us and we have to put aside our own discomfort or confusion or concerns. Not to the point that it’s harming you. If this is something that you truly can’t do, if it’s hurting you, then it’s okay to say no. But...” she trails off gazing towards the door, and Phil doesn’t need her to finish the sentence.

But Dan’s in pain, in trouble, maybe dying and Phil can stop it. Or at least make him more comfortable until they can really solve the problem. 

Phil doesn't know how to respond. It is hurting him, hurting them, but he knows if he bothered—or dared—to look closer at the situation, it probably wasn’t Dan doing the hurting. He’s just the stone in a shoe that had been broken for months, if not years, that Phil had been refusing to look at or mend.

“You can stay home this time.”

“I know.” He’s not actually sure she can promise that. Martyn would likely insist, as well as Phil’s dad. “I’ll go.”

“I’m proud of you.” She always manages to sound like she means it, even if Phil doesn’t believe he deserves it.

“Can I have another hug?”

“Of course.”

He holds on even longer this time, counting in his head until he’s certain it’s lasted longer than her hug with Dan earlier. Just because he’s a little petty.

“What did you talk about with him?”

“Oh, just how he’s doing, what his favorite kind of tea is, mostly silly things like that. You’ll have to ask him if you want to know the details.” She pauses, running her fingers through his hair, and Adra lets out a contented trill from atop Belenus. “I think he’d be very happy to speak to you about it. He’s lonely.”

Phil hardly needs to be told this. He can’t imagine how you could feel anything but completely isolated being so far from your daemon, and from what little he’s heard about Dan’s life, both in that place and before, it sounds like he’s been on his own for a while. But at least he’d had Cae.

“Sometimes I worry you’re lonely too. It might be nice for the two of you to get to know each other better.”

Phil draws back suddenly, feeling stung. Adra, however, stays where he is, just flicking a single eye up to look at Phil. He’s trying not to panic, not to hear the same tone his father had used when referring to an employee of his with a same-sex daemon, pointedly looking at Phil. Not to hear those words as accusation, as condemnation.

She’s allowed to want him to have friends. He hasn’t exactly made many since coming back from university.

“Maybe.”

“He’s really a sweet boy.”

Phil isn’t quite able to contain his snort, and his mum whacks him on the shoulder. 

“Sure mum. Really sweet.”

“Because you’re always such a perfect angel.” She gets up to leave, placing a hand on the crown of his head as she pauses for a moment. “Apologise to Dan please.”

Belenus lifts himself up with his front legs first, letting Adra slide gently off his back and onto the bed with a soft mewl of protest. Phil waits until they’ve left to respond.

“I don’t have anything to apologise for. Everything I said was true.”

Andra just circles twice before settling himself down on the duvet and shutting his eyes.

Phil sets about unpacking his bag and repacking it, this time with a better eye to the length of the trip, and possible activities to help pass the time. He adds a couple card games and some new books. Then he pulls out his spare rucksack and shoves in some clean clothes for Dan too. He looked about the same size as Phil, and his shirt seemed to fit him fine.

A little later on, Phil hears a very familiar scratching at his door.

“Come in,” he calls.

Hebe’s round nose pokes through the crack in the door, whiskers twitching as she waddles in. When they were kids and they fought, Martyn would always send Hebe in first to apologise. It’s always been an effective tactic. 

Martyn comes in and sits at the foot of Phil’s bed, just where Phil’s mum had sat.

“You don’t have to come with us.”

Phil takes in the offer, pretends for a moment he can accept it, imagines what it would feel like to get to stay home, safe and warm and away from all this mess.

What it would feel like to watch Martyn leave again, straight into worse danger than before. Leaving Phil alone with Adra, who would surely be furious. 

“I do though.” Phil says.

“Yes and no.”

“Is that supposed to be helpful?”

“I think it will say a lot about you if you do decide to come. But not what you’re so afraid it will.”

Martyn does this often, says things so frankly that it stings at Phil skin like he’s been flicked. He seems to think it’s comforting, but it drives Phil mad most of the time. He’d rather not face the fact that other people know what he’s thinking. That his fears are so easily recognized by others.

“I think it just says I know there’s not much of a choice,” Phil says finally. “Not unless I want to piss everyone off.”

“You’ve never been above that before. Once you make up your mind there’s usually no changing it.”

“And there still isn’t. I’ve decided I’m going.”

“Good. We’re leaving tomorrow morning. I’ve got the boat all set. We’re taking one of the old ones without Dad’s new logo. There’ll be a full crew, so you’ll have to stay cooped up again.” 

Martyn eyes Phil again, as if this might change things, but the whole point of him going is staying close to Dan.

“Fine.” Phil says. “I should go to sleep now if we’re leaving as early as I assume we are.”

“I won’t let anything happen to you this time either. You’re staying on the boat.”

“Fine again. I’m not going because I’ve suddenly acquired a death wish.”

Martyn nods and gets up, leaving without another word. Normally, Phil thinks, he and Adra would talk about that conversation, process their feelings and try to collect any stray observations about the interaction. It helps both of them to be able to work things out aloud. Now Adra just turns his eyes back to the door.

“We’re not going to see him tonight,” Phil mutters. “You’ll get to spend more than enough time with him starting tomorrow morning.”

Phil stands resolute in his decision, despite Adra shifting into a pika to achieve maximum pout. All Dan really cares about is getting back to Cae, not making new friends or getting to know a hostile stranger. And they’ll get along better during the long journey ahead of them if Phil can have just eight hours to himself. 

He almost convinces himself there’s no reason to feel guilty for leaving Dan on his own by the time he drifts off, several hours later.

Adra sleeps with his body pressed against the wall between their rooms, not touching Phil.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading! [Tumblr post here](https://phanomeheart.tumblr.com/post/611321398195044352/the-secluded-glade-chapter-37-t-51k-22k-so). I also have a [tag](https://phanomeheart.tumblr.com/tagged/hdm/) I've been using for general His Dark Materials/Book of Dust thoughts, but there are a lot of pictures of daemons there if anyone's interested in that.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks as always to Ev and Tara for help with editing!

“So,” Dan says, settling down onto the end of the bed in their new quarters, a nervous hand fluttering down as if to brush against Adra’s fur before drawing it back to his lap. “Here we are again, huh?”

They’d been on board for hours now, after getting a later start than expected because of some mix up with the crew or the cargo or something Phil worked very hard to ignore. Matryn had dragged him along anyway to help get everyone settled and make sure everything had been loaded on properly. Now Phil’s back in their room with a very antsy looking Dan. He feels tired, sore, and just a bit nauseated and wants nothing more than to lay down, but of course now Dan’s on the bed.

“We don’t have to talk,” Phil snaps. He rolls his eyes when Adra flicks him with his tail, then sits down on the other end of the bed with a resigned sigh. “Sorry, I’ve got a headache. And I’m starting to get seasick again.”

“You get seasick?”

“Yeah. It’s not that bad on the river usually, but it takes us a day or two to adjust.”

“Why did you come?” Dan starts again, voice faltering a bit as he avoids Phil’s glare. “No, I mean in the first place, not this time. I know that you—Does it have to do—your mum mentioned something about dreams? You dreamt about that place they were keeping me? Like before you knew it existed?”

Phil looks over to Adra for a minute. He can feel Adra’s desire for Phil to engage in this conversation laid over him, a hot, scratchy blanket trapping in stale air. 

“Did you know that macaques don’t experience motion sickness?”

Dan looks annoyed for a moment at the sudden swerve, then peers over at Adra curiously. “I didn’t. Is that why he’s a monkey right now?” He pauses until Phil nods, then continues. “You both seem to know a lot about animals.”

“I was a bit obsessed when I was a kid. Adra and I used to read animal books and Adra would try to transform into the weirdest ones. We even tried some extinct ones a few times. I think they probably looked more like we thought they did than whatever they actually looked like, though.”

Dan’s smiling softly now, eyes bright and warm. Phil lets himself get distracted by it, just for a moment.

“Is that how you learned about the monkeys? From one of the books?”

“No. My dad used to make us go with him on jobs when we were younger. He traveled a lot more back then, and still thought I might get interested in his business someday. My motion sickness was much worse back then, and we’d spend hours just lying on the floor, afraid to move and make it worse. Adra used to cycle through forms really quickly and for a while, I just thought it was a coping mechanism, but eventually, he found a form that made it better for him. He can still feel my nausea, but at least now it’s not doubled.”

“So your dad doesn’t expect you to go into the family business anymore?” Dan’s voice is smooth and nonchalant, transitioning them so effortlessly that Phil responds automatically.

“Not really. I mean he still—” he cuts himself short, finally catching on to the switch in topics. “It’s not a big deal.”

“That’s good,” Dan says easily, leaning back on his hands. “I don’t know what I would have done if my dad wanted me to do the same thing he does. Can you imagine me as a lawyer?” His laugh is loose and warm, inviting Phil to join in.

“I don’t know, you were pretty scary when you were yelling at us earlier.”

Dan goes still and blank and it’s moments like these that Phil most acutely feels the absence of his daemon. If she were here, Phil thinks, maybe she would give something more away about what Dan’s feeling. Maybe she and Adra would be talking quietly, easing their human’s communication by having a conversation of their own. Without someone for Adra to talk to directly their conversations feel stilted, and Phil can’t rely on insights gleaned from Adra’s whispered exchange.

Now all Phil has to go off is Dan’s shuttered expression and the way he’s gnawing at his lip during long silences.

“I don’t actually get angry like that very often. It was just…there was a lot going on.”

“I just meant you seem like you get passionate about things, and you defend those things. It’s good.”

“Well, I still don’t know if cussing out the judge would do me much good in winning a case.” His smile is back now, wry and diluted, but still there. Phil hazards a grin of his own.

And then his stomach lurches. He presses his hand over his mouth and rushes out the door, barely making it to the railing in time.

When he gets back to the room it’s conspicuously empty, and he takes a moment too long reveling in the privacy before he processes what’s wrong.

“Where did he go?” Phil demands, spinning around to face Adra.

“How should I know? I was with you!”

“He didn’t say anything about leaving?”

“When do you imagine he would have told me without you hearing too?”

“I don’t know, maybe the two of you can communicate without speaking now too.”

“Don’t be absurd, Phil. We don’t have time for this; we need to find Dan—”

“No you don’t.”

Adra and Phil both whip their heads to the door, where Dan is standing leaned against the doorframe, a cheeky grin stretched across his face. 

Phil’s having none of it, though.

“Dan! You can’t leave like that!”

“It’s fine, I just—”

“It’s not fine. You could cause a riot. Or get hurt. I’m supposed to be watching you.”

“So I could get you in trouble, is what you’re saying?” Dan scoffs, shuffling further into the room, hands behind his back conspicuously.

“No. Yes. But you shouldn’t go out there.”

“Relax mate, I didn’t run into anyone. It’s like 2 am. Besides, if I had run into anyone, I'd have it under control.”

“How exactly? How do you ‘have it under control’? Were you planning to just jump into the river? Because that’s still an option.”

A frown twitches at the corner of Dan’s mouth, but he just rolls his eyes and carries on. “I can sort of go a bit invisible. Not really,” he continues, smirking at the look of shock on Phil’s face, “not actually invisible, but I’m good at not being noticed. Really good. So as long as I notice them first I can sort of...keep myself from their attention.”

“And if they notice you first?”

“I’m very observant.”

“My grandma told me about people who could turn invisible,” Phil says, ignoring Dan’s continued defense of his truly horrible plan. “Or almost.” He waits a beat, then finishes his thought watching Dan closely for signs to support his newly bolstered theory. “They were witches.”

Dan’s cocky smile collapses on itself in an instant, and he looks around shiftily for a moment before holding up the cup in his hands.

“Here, this is for you.”

“What is it?” Phil lets himself be redirected, for the time being at least.

“Red raspberry leaf tea. My mum said it helped her loads with her morning sickness.”

“I’m not pregnant.”

“What?” Dan gasps, drawing a dramatic hand in front of his mouth. He’s settled on the far end of the bed now, and Phil rolls his eyes and shoves Dan with his foot. “It works for other kinds of nausea too, dork.”

“Well...thank you.”

“Now was that so hard?”

Phil thinks Dan’s less than magnanimous grin is a little hypocritical given the complete lack of gratitude he’s received from Dan for putting his life on hold, not once but _twice_ to sail off into the unknown to help him. Granted, the first time he didn’t know he was going to help Dan, and he hasn’t been particularly gracious about it, but a simple thank you never went amiss either way.

“Is your mum an herbalist?”

“You could say that.”

“That’s like the shiftiest possible way to answer a question, but okay.”

Dan lets out a short, sharp laugh that sounds almost painful and Phil really thinks he should stop being so amused by such a jarring sound.

“Because you don’t know anything about dodging questions. But fine, I’ll bite. But you have to promise to shut up for a second and let me talk.”

“Excuse you. I don’t talk nearly as much as you do.”

“Mmm, depends on your mood. But that’s the deal, take it or leave it.”

Phil grabs Adra, who’s shifted into a numbat to curl up on the bed between them, and presses him to his face in response, burying his mouth into the soft fur. Adra lets out a series of soft squeaks and when Phil looks back up he catches Dan staring at them with a grin big enough to show off his dimples. Well, Adra. Adra’s the cute one.

“Fine. I lived with my mum for the first fourteen years of my life. She’s a witch—”

“Aha!” Phil shouts, dropping Adra, who goes scrambling off Phil’s lap and under a pile of blankets between the two of them, poking his long nose out to wiggle in the air.

“Didn’t I say you wouldn’t be able to keep your mouth shut?”

“Because you knew you were going to be proving me right!”

Dan scoffs. “Prove you right about what?”

“That you’re a witch!”

“For someone so keen on rules about gender, you’re forgetting a pretty important one.”

Phil freezes, the giddy sensation of their easy back and forth dropping swiftly to settle as a cool, hard stone pressing at the base of his spine, straightening his posture. Dan always has to bring attention to these things, tone somehow light enough to lift these heavy topics with apparent ease.

They both sit with the silence for a moment. Phil doesn’t know what Dan is thinking, but several options shuffle quickly through his head. Dan thinks he’s an idiot who doesn’t know the basic rules of the world. Dan thinks he’s a bigot, rigid and hateful and not to be trusted. Dan thinks he’s pathetic.

Adra squirms back out from his blanket pile, a ferret now pressing his little head between Phil’s thigh and the bed.

“I’m sorry,” Phil says finally, suddenly desperate to break the silence he’d been craving just a few minutes ago. It feels louder now. “I won’t interrupt you again.”

Dan opens his mouth then shuts it, looking down to where Adra is working to obscure as much of his long, wriggling body under Phil as he can.

“So my mum’s a witch and my dad’s a human. I never actually met my dad until I was 14; I lived with my mum my whole life up until then. We lived on this little island off the southern coast. She’d take me into town every once in a while, so I did interact with other humans and learn some of their social norms, but for the most part, it was just us and whatever rules we thought were important. And some of her friends came to visit, and they’d sometimes stay with us. I never felt lonely or bored, but I did sometimes wonder what it would be like to have friends my own age. But mostly I was happy. And, like I’ve said, I grew up mostly without knowing any of the rules of your society, or at least being taught to question them. My mum and I touched each other’s daemons, just like we’d hug each other. I’d even touch the daemons of some of her closer friends, who stayed with us for a while. It was just...a way to show trust and affection.”

Dan trails off smiling softly, and Phil just waits. This obviously can’t be the end of the story. There has to be something, most likely a painful something, in between this happy childhood and where they had found Dan a few days ago. It already explains a lot, though. The easy way Dan moves and holds himself and glances at Adra as if his mane means nothing. His unconscious response to Adra’s touch, leaning in as if it meant nothing. Everything Phil had automatically hated him for.

Dan starts up again, his voice rough now.

“But then she left. I stayed there for a little under a year, but then there was that big flood and everything was underwater. She’d told me where my father was, so I decided I might as well go find him. I lived with him for...almost two and a half years, but it never really felt like home. Maybe I reminded him too much of her, or maybe I was just too different at that point to fit in with him and his community. We wound up fighting a lot.”

“Why’d your mum leave?” Phil asks, still stuck on the horror of that since Dan had first said it. He can’t imagine what he’d do if his mum left him.

Dan’s quiet for a moment. He reaches to the side, hand stalling in the empty air and Phil realises he’d probably reached out for Cae as a force of habit. Phil’s own hand finds Adra’s fur. 

“Witches don’t like to have sons. If they have daughters, then they’re witches and they can go live with them and age like them, and live together for thousands of years. Witches have to watch their sons die. Sons can’t fly or do magic. And I’m her son.”

He puts this last word in air quotes, and Phil has no idea what that means. Is he upset because she left?

“Why can’t sons do magic though?”

Dan regards him with a skeptical eye, and Phil gets how weird it must be to hear him of all people refusing to let this question go, but it feels like there’s something Dan’s not saying and he wants to know what it is.

“Well, I think you’d say something like, ‘that’s just the way it is.’ Either way, I can’t do magic or fly, no matter how much my mum tried to sneak it out of me. She kept in contact with her clan when I was growing up, and I met some of them, but she had to live separately from them when she was raising me. And for witches that’s...your clan is a big part of your culture, so she essentially gave that up for 14 years. But then a big group of them came and they took her back. Or she left with them. I don’t know. Either way, she was gone.”

“Why couldn’t you go with them, though?”

Dan sighs with his whole body, his shoulders pressing down and his nostrils flaring. “Their lifestyle is very particular to their abilities. It just wouldn’t be possible.”

“But you can separate from your daemon. That’s a witch thing right? Plus the invisible thing.”

“Sort of. Separating isn’t a thing they’re born able to do. They go through a rite of passage when they come of age. They have to travel somewhere their daemons can’t follow, and it separates them, and then they can travel far apart without pain. But it still hurts some. Just not in the same way it would hurt you.”

“Whoa,” Phil breathes, so entirely wrapped up in his new lesson on witches that he’s completely forgotten himself and his carefully composed distance. “So did you do that?”

“No. My mum always said she was going to take me there one day, but then she was gone and she never did. Or maybe she was lying; I don’t know. I don’t know if she would have been able to take me there. It would have been seen as a betrayal by most other witches, I think, to bring a human there. But she used to have me and Cae practice for it by slowly going farther and farther apart, stretching the maximum possible distance each time.”

Phil feels the light jab of sameness in his side and can’t help but interject again. “We played a game kind of like that too when we were little. In the playground, all the kids would have contests to see whose daemon would fly the highest. But eventually, it hurt too much to keep going, no matter how hard you tried.”

Dan looks down at his lap, fingers fidgeting with themselves. “My mum said part of being a witch was accepting that pain is part of life. She never made us do it to the point of excruciating pain, but it wasn’t exactly fun either.”

“Why’d she make you do it then?”

“She said it would be useful one day. And I guess she was right. Except we might have never been taken if we couldn’t do it.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know who turned me in, one of the neighbours maybe. My father, possibly. But I don’t think it was a coincidence that they found me and took me. Those people—they were part of the church. They never said it directly, but it was obvious. They were interested in the fact that Cae could still shift, and that we could go farther apart than normal. They wanted to test the boundaries of it. All of the other kids who were there were much younger, and they seemed to be interested in capturing the moment when their daemons settled.”

“Why?”

“I’m not sure. It kind of seemed like they wanted to figure out a way to stop it, or at least how I’d postponed it, but I can’t really imagine why. We—it’s not like it’s a conscious decision we’ve made. And I don’t know if anyone from the Magisterium would understand our particular reason, even if I knew how to explain it.”

That feels like a very rocky road to go down, so Phil swerves back to his original question.

“So you’re not separated from Cae then? Like a witch would be, I mean. This hurts like it would hurt a human, because you never went through that rite of passage?”

“I think this is that rite of passage, in a way. Or it’s done the same thing. I felt it, like something snapping, about halfway through our trip back to your house. That must have been our maximum limit, either time or space, I don’t know.”

Phil feels a terrible drip of cold run through his body, like that game he played as a kid sometimes, another child running a hand from the top of his head to the base of his spine whisper-singing, ‘drop an egg on your head and let the yolk run down.’ He wants desperately to ask what that felt like, what it feels like to be separated, but it also seems like an impossible question to actually speak aloud. Like he’d be some sort of...tragedy voyeur. So he presses on.

“But you didn’t say anything!”

“What should I have said? You’re already disgusted enough that I’m without my daemon; I didn’t think telling you we’d separated was going to help anything. You wouldn’t have even known what that meant!”

“You could have told me.”

“You would have listened?”

Phil feels the sting of it, his words like the sharp nip of Adra’s teeth when he’s displeased. They make him think though…

“Did you tell Adra?”

Dan’s silence speaks for him, and louder are Adra’s thoughts, daring Phil to complain, to get angry, when he knows his anger was what kept either of them from telling him. He does want to get angry. He’s hurt that Adra never said anything, but at the same time, he’s just a little glad that Dan had someone to tell, at least.

“So...what does that mean?” Phil asks finally, the softness of his voice seeming to startle Dan.

“I don’t know. It’s never happened to me before, has it?” He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, then looks back up at Phil. “It hurts differently now, just like sort of a duller loneliness. It’s...easier to manage, I guess. But it’s also scarier. I don’t know what it will be like when we find each other again. I don’t know how we’ll…”

Dan looks properly terrified now, more so than Phil’s ever seen him and surely that says a lot, given the small slice of Dan’s life Phil’s witnessed so far. And all Phil wants to do is distract him from it. He’s the one who brought this up in the first place after all. 

“Well, I still think you’re maybe a bit of a witch.”

It works. Dan laughs, and it’s that loud, barking laugh again, the one that makes Phil want to join in, even though he’s only heard it a couple of times.

“You sound like Cae.”

“What do you mean?”

“They just—we’re always arguing about why only women can be witches and what that even means when, well, I don’t know!” He punctuates his last thought with a heavy sigh and arms thrown up in the air. “Like what does it even mean to be a woman? Or a man? What is inherent in women that makes them able to do magic, potentially, that’s not in men? Why couldn’t it be in men? Why couldn’t there be, like, an in-between, you know? Or another thing entirely. Right?”

“Er, I think you lost me actually.”

There was a tiny piece in there that had felt just a bit familiar. Dan had asked what it meant to be a man, and Phil had felt a jolt of panic, instantly fearing he was meant to provide some sort of answer he definitely does not have. But Dan had continued and everything had just gotten murkier and by the end, Phil didn’t have any idea what Dan was saying. 

What could “another thing entirely” be?

Dan seems to deflate a bit more for every extra second Phil doesn’t elaborate, and Phil wants to say something, figure out the right response, but he feels so lost all of a sudden. What are they even talking about anymore?

“I do think it’s possible you could be a witch, though. Or at least have witchy tendencies.”

“Witchy tendencies. Okay, I like that. We can call it that for now.”

It feels like a definitive end to the conversation. Phil doesn’t have a response, anyway. In the beginning, as Dan had told him more about his childhood and his mum, and even Cae, Phil had started to feel like he understood Dan a bit better. Like maybe all of those times Dan had done or said something that had felt so unspeakably wrong to Phil, it had just been Dan being Dan.

But now he feels lost again, like he and Dan are speaking entirely different languages and there’s no magic translation that’s making it click.

Dan pulls his book back out and starts reading, definitively ending the conversation. He looks tired, and Phil’s not entirely convinced he’s actually reading. His eyes track the words sporadically, and he turns the pages at an uneven pace. Just for something to do, Phil pulls his own book out and does the same. 

Adra curls up in the gap between Phil’s crossed legs as a rabbit, his intermittent tremors keeping Phil alert until he finally falls asleep.

* * *

His stomach has settled some by the next afternoon, but he still spends most of the morning in bed. Dan has continued to sleep curled up in the blankets in the corner, and Phil knows he should offer to switch with him every other night, at least, but he’s nauseous and still feeling sorry enough for himself that it doesn’t feel necessary. 

He finally gets up sometime between lunch and dinner, telling Dan he’s going to stretch his legs and get some fresh air.

“I could come with you,” Dan offers, phrasing it like a favour to Phil.

He is a little wobbly on his legs, but Dan being there isn’t going to help anything.

“No, you can’t. One outing was enough for you. I’m meant to be keeping an eye on you.”

“Which you can’t do if I don’t come with you.”

“Dan—”

“Please, just—” Dan cuts himself off, turning beseeching eyes to Adra, then back to Phil. “I’m going mental cooped up in here. It’s just like being back—being there. I just want to walk around a little. Just for a couple of minutes. Please?”

Dan’s got a pout on, and Phil’s finding it frustratingly difficult to resist. He imagines what form Cae might take on now. Something small with round cheeks and big eyes, peering up at Phil with the same imploring look as Dan. It turns out he doesn’t need her help to break down Phil’s resolve. Or maybe it’s her absence that helps. 

“Fine. But we’re going to wait until after dinner and the next shift starts. And one quick lap only.”

“Yes, okay. Of course. Whatever you say.” Dan teeters forward on the tips of his toes and for a second it looks like he’s going to try to hug Phil. He doesn’t, but his brilliant smile is enough to send Phil’s head a little fuzzy anyway.

He must be getting seasick again.

“I’m going to go get some air. You stay here. I’ll come back and then we can go.”

Out of their dingy little room with new air coursing through his lungs, Phil feels...not really all that different. He feels...jittery. Maybe? Something’s off. 

Coffee. He hasn’t had coffee today.

Confident he’s cracked the code, Phil makes his way to the canteen. By the time he’s poured his third cup, he feels like he’s calmed down some. Or at least like the rest of the world has caught up to his speed. Adra’s turned into a cricket and is taking long leaps across the length of the table, back and forth and back and forth as Phil watches. His hands are shakier than normal, but it’s just the coffee. 

He keeps thoughts of his walk with Dan later this evening tucked carefully out of his mind.

When he finishes his third cup Bernie cuts him off, so he goes to find Martyn under the guise of checking on their progress. They’ve still got at least three days of deliveries and pick-ups and normal routes to follow before they’ll be able to get back to the abandoned warehouse. Phil can’t decide if he thinks of the extra time as daunting or relieving. He’s scared, of course, of going back there and what they might find. What they might not find, too, and what that would mean for Dan.

And of course, what that would mean for him and Adra. They can’t exactly go around following Dan for the rest of their life, keeping him just functional enough to live without Cae. 

Not that he’s got anything more concrete or useful planned for his future.

He wanders back to the canteen to grab two plates, bringing dinner back to the room. As soon as he opens the door Dan springs up. He looks distinctly greyer than he had when Phil left, and Phil motions him over to the bed, leaving a gap big enough for Adra to sit between them as they eat. 

“We still have to wait ‘til the start of the next shift,” Phil reminds Dan, eyeing his already empty plate. “It’s another 40 minutes.”

Dan nods and scootches himself further onto the bed until his back hits the wall, arms crossed and foot tapping the air in a stilted rhythm. Phil tries to ignore him while he finishes his food, but Dan’s energy is big and loud and swells to fill the room, so Phil finally gives up and pulls out the deck of cards he brought.

He hadn’t actually intended on using them, at least not with Dan, but they wind up playing three alarmingly competitive games of slapjack that result in three jammed fingers, one elbow to the ribs, and a possible black eye. And a fit of laughter so intense Phil thinks for a moment he might die from lack of oxygen as Dan screeches increasingly absurdist abuse at him.

Adra paces around them for most of the games, clearly wanting to get involved but not knowing how. He shifts frequently, crawling up to Phil’s shoulder as a lizard then pushing off to fly a few laps around them as a crow, then hopping back and forth between them as a wallaby. Phil catches Dan shooting Adra occasional guilty glances.

Dan’s kept his word about not touching Adra without permission, and Phil wouldn’t say he’s grateful exactly, with such a low bar of basic human decency, but he’s aware of the restraint it seems to require. Phil’s never been accused of being observant. More often than not he’s getting yelled at for spacing out, getting caught in his own little world, the realities he constructs in his head. 

But he does notice some things, like the way Dan’s hand instinctively reaches out whenever he’s stressed, sometimes towards Adra, sometimes into empty space. The way Dan leans into that empty space when his face goes blank. Or sometimes when he’s laughing, the way he turns to share his grin with someone who’s not there.

Phil hasn’t considered, though, the way it might alter Dan’s relationship with Adra. They’ve been so close—too close—so far, that it’s seemed absurd to consider possible tension between them, but Phil sees it now in the way Dan’s eyes track Adra’s movements, his mouth curled into a tight frown whenever Adra shifts again

Phil shoves his cards to the centre and gets up abruptly. 

“We can probably go take a walk now.”

It takes Dan a moment to snap out of his haze, but as soon as he does he’s on his feet and bouncing lightly on his toes.

“But only five minutes. And you have to do your invisible witch thing.”

“It’s not an invisible witch thing, I can just sort or blend in—”

“Whatever. Do whatever you need to do, become one with the wall, just don’t get us caught.”

Dan just nods and glances towards the door, so Phil takes one last deep breath and waves his hand. This is definitely a horrible idea, but Phil can’t really seem to regret it as he watches Dan and Adra, currently a golden retriever, giddily bounding down the narrow deck. Adra is careful to stay within range and Dan matches pace with him, but they turn a corner and before Phil catches up to them, he feels a shudder that is distinctly not his own rattle down his spine.

When he turns the corner and reaches the front deck of the boat there are two men walking towards Phil, talking loudly to each other and mercifully ignoring Dan, who’s frozen behind them with Adra at his side. Phil moves quickly to join them, holding his breath as the two men continue walking. He’s just about to release it when one of the men’s daemons, a sharp-nosed dingo, stops and turns, sniffing at the air. The other man’s daemon, a canary, flits off his shoulder to land next to her.

It takes a second for the men to notice, but Phil sees the moment they do. Before they’ve fully turned around, Phil surges into action. He shoves Dan around the other corner so he’s obscured by the wall, then takes a step towards the men, thinking desperately the whole time, _antlers, something with antlers. ___

__He watches the familiar cycle of expressions flit across the men’s faces, surprise shifting to snide smiles. Adra takes several steps forward until Phil can see the puff of his chest and the unmistakable twelve-point rack rising majestically from his head. Phil can feel Adra’s excitement and pride clashing with his own fear, mixing together into an unrecognizable cocktail of adrenaline and spite._ _

__Phil waits for them to say something, do something, but they don’t, just turn to each other and laugh and walk away. It should maybe feel worse, but all Phil can really manage to process is an overwhelming sense of relief and the steady beat of his heart pounding in his ears._ _

__“Thank—” Dan starts, appearing from around the corner again, but Phil cuts him off immediately._ _

__“We are going to wait until they’re gone, and then we’re going back to the room. And never do this again.”_ _

__By the time he’s counted to sixty the men are nowhere to be seen, but his body is still vibrating. Adra, annoyingly, still hasn’t shifted back, and his antlers knock against the side of the boat as they make their way back to the room, but Phil’s tongue has swelled in his mouth and he can’t imagine how to make it form words to get him to shift to anything else._ _

__When they finally make it back, Phil collapses immediately onto the bed._ _

__“Thank you,” Dan says, still hovering nervously by the door. The sincerity in his gratitude grates on Phil. Here in the confines of the room, the antlers Adra’s still sporting seem even larger, taking up more space than feels like exists between them. Dan looks at them again and Phil wants to scream._ _

__“You can thank me by not being that careless again,” Phil bites back, sitting back up abruptly. He’s careful not to make eye contact with either of them._ _

__“It wasn’t that bad. Maybe they wouldn’t have cared.”_ _

__Phil watches the way Dan’s hands sweep through the air, waving off Phil’s concern then planting firmly on his hips._ _

__“They _did_ care,” Phil insists. “You heard them, they—they did care and you can’t just go around pretending as if everything’s normal and no one’s going to be upset by it.”_ _

__“Phil, did someone—”_ _

__“Please can we stop talking about this,” Phil begs, because he doesn’t want to have this conversation, and he_ can’t_ have this conversation, and he’s surely going to cry if they keep going and Adra is still a stag and Dan keeps glancing at his antlers and he just wants it all to go away, just long enough to catch his breath.

But of course, Dan has to press.

“That’s why Adra’s so careful about what form he takes when other people are around?”

“Adra’s not careful; I’m careful.” 

Adra takes a loud step back at the venom in Phil’s voice, his hooves clicking against the wood of the floor.

“Thank you for taking that risk, then.” He’s turned now, talking directly to Adra, making Phil’s chest tighten. It’s not right. Not nearly as wrong as the hand he’d curled loosely in Adra’s fur a few days ago, but not right either. Presumptuous. 

“Phil told me to,” Adra says, speaking up for the first time in what feels like hours. “It was his idea.”

Oh. Well, this is worse. Dan’s eyes are on him now, steady and heavy and warm. Too warm. It’s too hot in here and he needs air but going back outside sounds like an equally bad idea. 

“Don’t you dare say thank you again,” Phil cuts in as Dan opens his mouth.

He shuts them again and takes a deep breath before looking back up at Phil, the naked determination in his gaze making Phil’s jaw clench.

“Why don’t you want them to see his antlers, though? I think he’s got lovely antlers.” Adra lets out a pleased huff and that, finally, is too much.

“I don’t know what your game is,” Phil shouts, making both Dan and Adra startle, “but this isn’t funny at all. I suppose it’s a joke to you as well that Adra’s male.”

“Why would I think that’s funny?” Dan sounds sincere, but Phil still can’t quite trust him. 

“Stop playing dumb! I know you were raised in the woods, but surely you picked up some minuscule understanding of humanity before your father turned you in.” 

“I don’t know what I’ve done to make you think that,” Dan starts in a steady, low tone, “but I never meant to imply that I think Adra was funny in any way. I was just wondering why—”

“Have you not noticed that everyone else you’ve ever met has a daemon of the opposite sex? Including your own? Except me.” 

Dan’s shoulders jerk back abruptly and he just watches Phil for a moment.

“Not everyone. Most people, I guess. I’m still not sure what this has to do with anything though.” 

Phil flounders, unsure how to continue. He’s never had to explain to anyone what’s wrong, exactly, with Adra being male and he finds he doesn’t have any words to use. No one ever said to him precisely what it meant or why he should be ashamed, though he’d somehow gleaned the message all the same. But now, faced with explaining it to someone who seems so determined not to see his peculiarity, he’s frozen.

Clearly this was Dan’s intent, but Phil’s having trouble coming up with anything to prove him wrong.

“It’s just—it’s not how it’s supposed to be. I’m—different and everyone sees it and they know what it means.”

“What does it mean?”

“It doesn’t mean anything,” Phil spits.

“But you just said it did.”

“No, I didn’t!” He had, but he doesn’t understand the way this conversation is going at all and he’s lost his footing entirely. No one’s ever come this far down this path with him.

“You did. But I really don’t care either way, if it means something or if it doesn’t. I’m different too, remember? Cae and I can separate, Cae hasn’t settled. That doesn’t _really_ mean anything, does it? I mean, about me.”

“But…but your _daemon_ does, don’t they? Everyone knows that what form they take tells people something about you. ‘Cause it is you.”

“Well,” Dan says slowly, clearly considering this in all earnestly, “I suppose it does. But not, like, the whole of who you are, right? Like, my mum’s daemon is an albatross but that doesn’t mean my mum is like constantly swooping around as a harbinger of doom.”

“You don’t understand anything!” 

This, finally, seems to strike a nerve. Dan’s moved farther into the room now, pacing and gesturing and taking up almost as much room as Adra’s horrible antlers, wrapped up in Phil’s anger all of a sudden and looking more like the boy his brother had first brought aboard than he has in days. Phil wonders errantly what form Cae would take on right now. Does she change even now, when she’s so far away? Phil can feel a bit of his rage shouldered roughly to the side by a wave of empathy for Dan, but he shoves it down.

“Just because I don’t care about all of your society’s stupid, pointless rules and etiquette doesn’t mean I’m clueless. I just don’t think it matters.” 

It has to matter though, because if it doesn’t Phil’s wasted a whole lot of time worrying about it.

“Why are you lying?”

“I’m not!” 

“Phil.” Their heads both whip around to find Adra in unison. “That’s enough.”

“But he—”

“Dan’s telling the truth. I wouldn’t take this form in front of him if he wasn’t. You know that.”

Phil’s not sure if he does, honestly. He’s been getting less and less careful recently, even before they met Dan and now...Phil’s not really sure what he thinks. 

“Look,” Dan says, fingers fidgeting nervously with themselves, “I’m sorry; I shouldn’t have pushed. Sometimes I get a little...fixed on a certain point of view and I forget other people grew up differently than me. I really do appreciate what both of you did for me, and for what it’s worth, I thought it was really cool. When did you tell Adra to shift into a stag? I didn’t hear anything.”

Adra leaves this, at least, to Phil to explain. It’s something that no one outside his family knows and it should probably feel terrifying to explain, but at this point, it feels like almost nothing. Phil fixes on it as something else to occupy him, something other than this nervous, indignant, terrified, excited, agitated energy he doesn’t know where to put.

“We can talk, sort of, without talking. Like telepathically, I guess. More than other people can with their daemons. Actual words and phrases, if we’re really concentrating. So I told him to shift into something with antlers. To distract them.” 

Because you were about to get found out just like I warned you about, he doesn’t say. Instead he waits for Dan to finally react to one of Phil’s peculiarities like a normal human being. Only it’s Dan, so of course he doesn’t.

“That’s so fucking cool! This whole time you’ve been calling me a witch, but you’ve had this hidden superpower up your sleeve.”

However Phil had expected Dan to react, it was not this. Not as if it’s something to be excited about, or even impressed by. He’s still going, rattling off questions faster than Phil can follow and acting as if they hadn’t just spent several minutes shouting at each other at the top of their lungs.

“How do you do it? Have you always been able to do it? Does it have anything to do with the dreams you still won’t tell me about? Is there like a maximum range? That’d be so cool if Cae and I could—oh but I guess the maximum range would just be as far apart as you can go. But maybe if—”

“Dan, just—I think it’s probably related to the dreams, which are probably related to, uh, Adra. Our grandmother could do it too, and she had the dreams. We can talk about it more tomorrow if you really want, but I’m going to go to sleep now.”

Phil turns away quickly, not wanting to take in too much of Dan’s shocked expression, or Adra’s grin. He settles into bed, back turned towards the room and listens to the noises of Dan turning off the naphtha-lamp and settling into his makeshift bed.

After a moment the mattress dips and Adra lays down next to him, heavy and large and warm. Probably a lion.

Phil counts Dan’s breaths as they slow into a steady rhythm, trying to sink into beat beat beat of it, trying not to think about the men and their laughter or Adra and his antlers or the words Phil thought to cause them or the way it felt to choose them or Adra’s satisfaction or Dan’s shocked expression or Dan’s string of questions or Dan’s indignation or Dan’s fascination or Dan’s reassurance or Dan or Dan or Dan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading! [Tumblr post here](https://phanomeheart.tumblr.com/post/611713376420347904/the-secluded-glade-chapter-47-t-72k-292k).


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a heads up that this is the chapter with the quasi-outing, i.e. Adra has a bit of a coming out, but of course outs Phil in the process (and like what does that mean when you're the same person but also different and have different feelings on the topic). A heavy chapter, but lots gets resolved/communicated within it as well.

The next morning Dan is there when Phil wakes up, but so is a cup of tea waiting on his bedside table. Phil isn’t feeling particularly nauseated anymore, but he sits up and takes a sip without comment.

Dan seems subdued this morning. Or maybe that’s not quite right. He looks a little paler, the bags under his eyes still heavy and dark. He’s sitting on top of his pile of blankets, back against the wall and hands pinned under his thighs, staring at Phil. Phil thinks he’s probably going for a calm and patient look on his face, but he looks more like a kid whose parents told him he could have extra dessert if he sat quietly through the rest of dinner.

And Phil is the dinner. Or the conversation he pushed off last night is, anyway. He takes another slow sip of his tea. If Dan wants to have this conversation he can start it.

“So apparently you calling me a witch is a little bit of a pot calling the kettle black situation,” Dan says finally, after Phil has gotten more than halfway through his cup. 

“Or a witch calling the witch a witch situation?” Phil asks. “I’m not a witch, though.”

“But you can see the future with your dreams? Seems pretty witchy to me, mate.”

“It’s not really that simple. And do witches even have prophetic dreams?”

“Well, no. But I haven’t met all the witches in the world. I’ve met like…twelve tops. Maybe there are different kinds of witches with different kinds of magic.”

Phil stops to consider this for a moment. Is this possible? But no, his grandma had the dreams too and she wasn’t a witch. At least she couldn’t fly or separate from her daemon or any of that. As far as Phil knows. The one thing they’d had in common, aside from the dreams, was having a daemon of the same sex. But Dan said most witches don’t.

“And you think I’ve got this ability because I’m a boy?” The word sounds stupid as soon as it leaves his mouth. He should have said man, probably. “And if men could be witches they might be different from female witches?”

Phil’s not touching what he thinks is probably the real reason for his ability. What his family has implied is the reason for as long as he can remember. He still hasn’t actually said it to Dan, and now Dan seems to have been properly distracted by the male witches route.

“No, I don’t think it’d be any different necessarily. But maybe. My mum did have a friend, Errol, who was banished from his clan because of the animal form his daemon took, because they said it proved they didn’t belong with the witches.”

“I thought you said men couldn’t be witches.”

Dan casts a speculative look at Phil, seeming to make some sort of decision after a moment, though Phil can’t fathom what. 

“That’s the general rule. I also said rules are messier than that. His clan didn’t like the mess. He lived with us for a little while and I thought he was great. Cae and his daemon Charra got along really well. She was a giant tortoise, which doesn’t really lend itself to a flying lifestyle obviously.”

“Couldn’t he have left his daemon on the ground though?”

“It still doesn’t feel good to be apart, even if you’re separated. And it’s not something you’d want to do for the rest of your life. Besides, it wasn’t really about that anyway. They said his daemon’s form said something about him, that he was incompatible with their lifestyle, but there was more to it. They thought _he_ was incompatible with their lifestyle. Or disrespecting it.”

“Because he’s a man?” They’ve crossed into foggy territory again, where it feels like Dan’s saying a lot more things than Phil hears.

“In a sense, yes.”

Phil decides to ignore the ambiguity. If Dan doesn’t want to explain, Phil’s not going to pry. “So did he have any different abilities? From the other witches in his clan? The women, I mean?”

“No, not that I know of. I think he wound up specializing in different kinds of magic since he couldn’t fly easily, but I think he could do everything they could.”

“And they kicked him out because of the form his daemon took?” Phil asks, but it doesn't really come out as a question. It’s not something he needs to question; the words make perfect sense to him.

Dan watches him for a moment, a frown pressing creases into his cheeks. “My mum told me once when I was little that there are other worlds. Thousands of them. More, probably. Too many to count. Some of the witch clans were getting all worked up about some prophecy and something about doorways opening between the worlds. Some of the worlds are completely different to ours, and others are almost exactly the same, except for some small details.”

It’s easy, really, for Phil’s mind to slip into one of these worlds without thinking. Into a world where Adra is female. Or maybe as Dan would suggest, a world where it doesn’t matter. Dan carries on, though, swerving into completely unexpected territory.

“She said there are worlds where humans don’t have daemons.”

Phil feels as though Dan has yanked something from his hands. He looks down immediately to find Adra, even though he can feel him wriggling into his lap, a small brown rabbit with flattened ears and trembling sides. When he looks back up at Dan, Phil catches him watching them with a pained look. 

“But they don’t...are they not…” Phil is fighting to get a coherent sentence to come out of his mouth as Adra shifts into a snake and winds his way up Phil’s arm, squeezing as he goes. “Then they’re…”

“No, they’ve got daemons. Sort of. They’re just inside of them. Or something. I didn’t fully understand it, and my mum’s never been there. She just met a witch who met a man who claimed to have been to this world. He said...they don’t miss anything, because they don’t know there’s anything to miss.”

Phil thinks it’s a small miracle that Dan doesn’t choke over the brittle words. He wants to say something, anything that might be even a little bit reassuring or helpful, but he’s got absolutely no idea what that could be, and Dan’s talking again anyway.

“Cae and I used to talk about it sometimes. What it would be like. Mostly we thought it was horrible. Lonely.” He lets out a short, bitter laugh before continuing and Adra twitches down Phil’s arm, as if to climb off, but then he stills again. “But we also thought it might not be so bad in some ways. Errol’s life would have been a lot easier if his daemon was inside of him I think.

“I can’t imagine life without Cae—I don’t want to—but sometimes I do think it would be a little simpler to just be one person, instead of two split like this, arguing and disagreeing and having to reckon with our differences along with our sameness. And we couldn’t be taken from each other then.”

Phil doesn’t say a word. He doesn’t dare. He tries to shut his mind off from Adra, but Adra’s not looking anyway. He doesn’t dare either. They both know what they’re thinking. How much easier Phil’s life would be if he could keep this abnormal piece of him a secret. How much easier, in those simple terms, his life would be without Adra.

“I don’t hate him, you know,” Phil says instead of agreeing.

“Who?”

“Adra,” Phil whispers, though of course he wouldn’t be able to whisper quiet enough to keep Adra from hearing.

“Of course not. Do you think I think that?”

“Maybe.”

“Why?”

“We fight so much in front of you, and you clearly judge me for caring that he’s male. And I know you talk to him when I’m asleep. He probably complains to you about me. I know I’m not…I’m trying.”

“Phil—” Dan starts, but Phil’s words catch up with him all of a sudden and he needs to get the fuck out of this room, away from the person who just heard those ugly, private thoughts, meant only for the inside of his brain.

He gets up and heads towards the door.

“Phil wait. Of course I don’t think that. Please stop. I fight with Cae too sometimes. How could you not? It’s okay. It’s okay to disagree and have to work through that. It doesn’t make you any less of a person to struggle with it a bit. There’s a lot to figure out. Especially if—some of us have more to figure out. We have to do some more thinking, because the world isn’t laid out as neatly for us. It’s okay to have things to work out between the two of you because of that. Even if it wasn’t because of that, I would never judge you for having a different opinion than your daemon. That’s absurd.”

There he goes again, with that gentle, patient, nearly flippant tone, stating things so clearly, so rationally, that Phil had been grappling with all his life. As if they don’t matter. As if the struggle is completely made up in Phil’s head.

Adra’s a ram behind him, butting his head into Phil’s legs and he knows Dan’s saying it’s okay, it’s understandable, maybe even normal, but it still feels so monumentally revealing to have him be saying those things at all. To know that Phil’s worried about them. Why did he say anything at all?

“I’m going on a walk.” Phil’s words are abrupt and they seem to shove through the space roughly, knocking the tentative smile off Dan’s face.

“Phil,” Adra growls. He’s a bear now, standing between them, and this form is new and different and something Phil doesn’t want to think about. “What about Dan?”

Phil doesn’t really know what Adra means. Should he invite Dan on the walk? Should he stay here and finish this awful conversation? Does Adra want Phil to admit to Dan even more about how they fight, the details of what they disagree on?

“Do you need anything?”

“No, I’m fine. I’m sorry—”

Earlier, Phil had been desperate for an apology, or a thank you, or some tiny acknowledgement from Dan of the lengths Phil has gone through and the discomfort he has endured to help Dan. Now, he doesn’t want to hear it. 

Instead, he walks three laps around the ship and stops into the canteen briefly, but it’s too full for him to want to go in. Adra is like a dead weight holding him back the entire time. He drags his feet and moves intentionally slowly and, after Phil turns back to glare at him, has the audacity to turn into a giant tortoise. He refuses to change back, no matter how many times Phil grumbles at him or how many perplexed looking crew members have to shimmy and clamber around him on the narrow deck as they try to get by at a reasonable pace. 

On his fourth painfully slow lap he passes Martyn’s room and thinks maybe he can go antagonize him for a change of pace. As he approaches the door, though, he hears a set of frustrated voices, so he slows his pace and quiets his footsteps. Adra shifts to a moth and flutters around his ear, now pressed close to the cracked open door.

“It’s not that I don’t want to give you one, we just don’t have any spare rooms at the moment,” Martyn says, voice strained and low.

“I’m not picky, it can be a supply closet,” says Dan, and Phil feels a quick jab of betrayal, even though this is what he’s wanted all along. “Or I could share with someone else.”

Oh, so he’s looking for a replacement roommate? Phil hasn’t been good enough for him, sharing his tiny room, his clothes, his books, and, oh yeah, his freaking daemon? Adra bounces his soft body against Phil’s cheek, and Phil diverts his attention back to the conversation.

“—not a good idea. You have to know that. It’s bad enough that you’re walking around without a daemon. If anyone notices it might cause a stir, and they might report you. There are signs with your picture in all of the towns saying you’ve gone missing, you know. The Magisterium is claiming you were placed under their care and that you’re potentially dangerous. They want to get you back to that place.”

“I just think Phil could use some time away from me. I’ve been asking a lot from him.”

Phil thinks Dan could use a little more self preservation. Did he not hear Martyn saying those terrible people who’ve got Cae are still looking for him? This hardly seems the time for a room swap. 

“Did the two of you have a fight?”

“When do we not fight?”

“So then what’s the problem? Listen Dan, I lived with him for 18 years. I know what a pain in the arse he can be. But he just gets…a little prickly sometimes. Is this about Adra? And, uh, you?”

“No. Sort of. It’s more about Adra and Phil. I think I might be putting a little too much pressure on them. I don’t want to cause any trouble.”

“They’re always like that. They’ve fought ever since they were kids.”

That’s not true, Phil thinks desperately from the other side of the door. We didn’t start fighting until we got older. Until we had something to disagree over.

“They fight about me a lot, though, so it feels like removing me from the picture might make it easier.”

“What is your relationship with Adra?”

Phil gasps audibly, but luckily it’s concealed by a loud shuffle in the room that sounds like Hebe jumping onto the floor.

“I don’t...I don’t really know how to answer that. What would—we’re friends, I guess.”

“But you and Phil aren’t?”

Dan pauses again, and Phil wishes he could see his expression, unhelpful as it often is. 

“I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who was as different from their daemon as Phil.”

“They’re not actually all that different, you just have to learn to read Phil.”

“I think he really doesn’t want me to do that, actually,” Dan says.

Martyn must hear the finality in his tone too, because he sighs, then says, “Fine. You can take my room. I can bunk with Jack, he’s got an extra hammock. But I don’t think this is actually going to solve anything.”

“We don’t have to solve anything. We just have to all make it back to the warehouse in one piece so I can get Cae back and let the rest of you get back to your lives.”

“Where are you going to go when we find her? I was under the impression you don’t have a home to return to.”

“Wow, pretty harsh mate,” Dan says, but his tone is light.

Martyn laughs lightly, and Phil can hear the tension clearing out of him. Of course Dan gets along with Martyn too. “Sorry, I didn’t mean it like that. I just meant if you need somewhere to regroup—”

“Your mum already offered, but I don’t think that’s a good idea. Don’t worry,” he insists, probably in response to that horrified mother hen expression Martyn sometimes gets that he inherited from their mum, “nothing can be worse than these past few months.”

“We don’t have to settle this now; just think about it, alright. I guarantee you Phil will calm down and feel bad about whatever he said.”

Unlikely.

“Somehow I doubt it. I’m the one that said something wrong, anyway.”

“What did you say?”

Phil holds his breath.

“I’m not really sure, to be honest.”

“He’ll work it out and let you know eventually. In the meantime, I’ll go get your stuff. I assume he’s pretty pissed right now?”

“He just seemed upset. And he went out for a walk, so I don’t know if he’s there.”

“Well either way, you shouldn’t be wandering around out there. I’ll go—”

Phil doesn’t wait for him to finish his sentence, hurrying back to his room before he processes that he’ll have to talk to Martyn there. He’s just spun back around to leave when Martyn opens the door.

“Look who it is. Dan came to beg me to let him stay anywhere else because he’s afraid he hurt your feelings. What did you say?”

“What did _I_ say? You just said Dan thought he hurt my feelings, shouldn’t you be asking him that?”

“I did. And he didn’t have any answers, so I’m asking you.”

“Well, I don’t have any answers either. It’s none of my business if Dan wants some space. I’m not complaining, though.” 

Martyn takes a minute to scan the room, eyes flitting over Dan’s makeshift bed in the corner and then coming to rest on Adra, standing between Phil and the bed, a lion once again.

“Adra’s been a lion a lot recently. I haven’t seen him take that form in a while. Especially not in front of other people.”

“So?” 

Martyn frowns at the hostility in Phil’s voice and Hebe flicks her tail against the floor.

“So nothing. I just thought…you’re still alright with this whole setup?” 

“Alright with it? What, you mean being forced to come along with your stupid mission, being threatened into being his keeper? Spending less time with my own daemon than he does? Yeah, it’s great.”

“Phil, you know…you wouldn’t—it’s very rare for daemons to do something that a person really isn’t comfortable with, at least on some level. Some would say impossible.”

“Yeah, well, most people say it’s impossible for our daemons to be more than a few feet from us and Dan’s doing that.”

“It’s taking a toll on him, you know that. But that’s not the point. I just…there are some exceptions to the taboo, you know.”

“You don’t know that about me!” 

Martyn takes a step back when Phil shouts this, and Phil tries to storm out of the room dramatically, but stops short at the door frame, wheezing and clutching at his stomach. While it has gotten easier to go slightly further from Adra in the past few weeks, Phil still can’t leave a room without him. And while that normally wouldn’t be a problem, it seems like the days where Adra would storm out with him are long gone. Fighting to hold back his tears, he turns back to Martyn shakily, fists clenched. 

“I know I’ve always been the freak of the family, Martyn, but just because I have a male daemon doesn’t mean you get to just assume whatever you want about me. It’s not like that between Dan and I.”

“Phil, I—”

“Adra, come! We’re leaving.” Phil’s voice breaks a bit when he calls to Adra, and he can see his own revulsion mirrored in Martyn face at the way he just commanded his daemon like a pet. Adra looks like he’s going to refuse for a terrifying moment, and Phil knows he won’t be able to keep himself from breaking down completely at that point.

“What about Dan—”

“He’ll be fine. But if you’re so concerned about him, why don’t you lend him your daemon for the night?” Phil doesn’t wait around to hear Martyn’s response, marching out of the room and down the hallway without glancing back to see if Adra is following.

He makes his way to the canteen, deciding to drown his sorrows in some of the cakes he saw Bernie baking earlier before he goes to crawl under his blankets and never come out again. There aren’t too many people there at this time of night, just eight people scattered around the small room, some eating but most playing cards or chatting quietly. Phil takes a table to himself, inhaling the sweets faster than he can taste them. He’s got the fifth one halfway to his mouth before he realizes the entire room’s gone silent. When he looks up he thinks for a moment that everyone is staring at him, but he eventually realizes their gazes are all trained about half a metre to his left. He turns and sees Adra in a form he’s never taken before. For good reason. 

His feathers shimmer brilliantly, even in the dull light of the canteen, royal blue and green and glints of gold drawing all eyes to them like a spell. As Phil makes eye contact, Adra unfurls his tail feathers slowly until one hundred eyes are staring back at Phil, the longest of them brushing against either wall of the small room. 

Chatter breaks out suddenly, muted but clamorous, and Phil can feel all the words as if they were physical things, pushing down on him, pressing him into his seat. For a moment he thinks he’s paralyzed, but Adra breaks eye contact to survey the room and Phil stands, sending the bench beneath him clattering to the ground. 

Normally he’d be mortified, but all of the eyes in the room are already on him, aren’t they? Or on Adra, which is the same thing really. In fact, perhaps it’s better for them to look at him. They shouldn’t be seeing Adra like this. This is for Phil only, for him to keep locked up tight, away from prying eyes and pitying frowns. Trembling violently, Phil makes his way out of the room hastily, snagging his feet noisily on two table legs on the way out. Again, he trusts that Adra is following and doesn’t stop to check, though now he doesn’t know what to think, honestly. 

Why had he done that?

He doesn’t want to go back to his room like this, let Dan see him like this. He’d almost grown accustomed to his new roommate, but a hissing voice at the back of his mind wants to blame this entire episode on Dan, even though logically Phil knows Dan’s not actually involved. Dan wouldn’t tell Adra to do this. But then he remembers Dan won’t be there. He’s gone. 

Phil should be happy, relieved, but it’s just another thing he doesn’t have the space to sort through. Dan’s probably with Martyn now, talking about how broken Adra and Phil’s relationship is, how messed up Phil is.

“You know they wouldn’t say anything like that,” Adra says softly, nudging the door closed with his ostentatious bright blue head before rounding on Phil. 

Phil sits on his bed, rattling the metal frame noisily as he shakes his leg.

He wasn’t planning on speaking to Adra, briefly considered never speaking to him again if he thought he could bear it, but the silence of their small room presses upon him. “Why did you do that?” he demands.

Adra shifts back into a lion, slightly taller than normal so that his eyes are nearly even with Phil’s from his place on the bed.

“It’s not like they didn’t know.”

“We haven’t told—”

“No, no one’s told anyone, but they all know. You know they do. There’s rumors—”

“There’s always rumors. Doesn’t mean they know.”

“Well now they do.”

“Why?”

“Isn’t it better to tell them ourselves than to have them gossip about it behind our backs?”

“That’s never what we thought before. We always agreed it was better to keep a low profile.”

“No, you always agreed. I never liked it. And Dan said—”

“I don’t care what he says. It’s us. It’s always been us. Why’re you—you keep making decisions without me.” 

He’s trying to stay angry, he really is, but he’s always been rubbish at confrontation and he knows by the way his voice is trembling now that he’s less than a minute from tears if this continues. Adra takes a step forward, like he’s going to rest his head in Phil’s lap but the thought turns Phil’s stomach and he stands sharply. 

“Why don’t you go to Dan? I'm sure you’re worried about him.”

“You won’t come with me,” Adra says uncertainly, shifting briefly into a rabbit before going back to his lion form, slightly smaller than before.

“No.”

“We’ll hurt, then. It’s too far.”

“At least it won’t be just me, then.” 

Adra stares at him for a long while, unblinkingly.

“You think you’re the only one in pain on this boat. In this world?”

“No, I—”

“It’s time to grow up.” 

Phil’s been told that countless times before, but it’s never hurt more than it does coming from Adra’s mouth. He can feel a tear drip down his cheek, but he refuses to acknowledge it.

“You’re supposed to care about my pain the most. Our pain.”

“Maybe I don’t think we should do that anymore.” 

“Just go.” 

And then he leaves. Even though Phil had told him to, and meant it, he hadn’t expected Adra to leave. He never had before, had never been able to. Phil can feel the restless tugging as soon as he’s a few paces out the door, and it quickly turns into a sharp, frightful, stabbing pain as Adra continues down the narrow hall. Phil can feel him pause, but he continues after a moment and the pain continues to swell until it feels like it will tear him apart. He collapses back onto the bed and curls his body in on itself as tight as he can, until tears are dripping down onto his knees.

Phil is many things. He’s timid and anxious and eager to please, and usually not one to rock the boat or push back in any obvious way. But he’s also stubborn to a fault and has always been if you listen to his mum. And as he is, so is Adra. So Phil spends hours, he’s sure, in agony, unwilling to bend. Adra should come groveling back to him, begging for forgiveness for choosing someone else over him. That’s not how this is supposed to work. But Phil knows his daemon, knows himself, and knows deep down that Adra will never do that. Eventually, Phil drifts off, either to sleep from exhaustion or into unconsciousness from the pain.

It’s a restless slumber he falls in and out of several times before he finally rises, not fully in control of himself, and stumbles down the hall and into Martyn’s room. Everything in his body screams at him to climb into the bed and press his body into the lion laid alongside Dan, but there is something left in him that resists and he crumples against the wall instead, yanking an extra blanket from the foot of the bed to rest his head on. He’s dimly aware of Adra raising his head to look at him, but before he can do anything the room fades to black.

* * *

Phil wakes early the next morning, feeling as though the handful of hours of restless sleep he got on the floor next to Dan and Adra—sharing a bed as though that was how it should be—had only made him more tired. He pushes off the floor as quietly as he can, hoping the popping of his joints is only noisy to his own ears, but when he raises himself level with the bed he’s met with Adra’s eyes, large and unblinking.

He’s a pika this morning, and it feels like a familiar apology, but Phil’s not going to be the first one to open his mouth. He doesn’t feel like he has the capacity for words, even if he wanted to be the bigger person, which he does not.

What he wants is coffee.

He stands and stretches briefly, pausing to lean against the wall as his head spins for a moment. He doesn’t look back at Adra as he leaves the room, but he doesn’t need to. The thing between them—the thing that’s not a physical thing but hurt all the same last night with a pain worse than any Phil’s ever experienced—feels almost sore this morning, raw and stretched too thin. Maybe that’s just Phil’s bruised ego, though, or his pounding headache amplifying all the other aches in his body, real and imagined. Either way it’s still there, a cold metal press against his attention. Brittle.

He can feel it tug against Adra, then slacken as Adra rises too, following after Phil with careful steps, never more than a meter away. That too, Phil knows, is an apology. Or at the very least, an acknowledgement of the new low they’d reached last night. That he doesn’t want to go back there again. Not quite an apology, though, because they are cut from the same cloth after all.

If Adra were cloth, he’d be sailcloth, stiff, unyielding, built to withstand. Phil shakes his head, starting to teeter dangerously into an alternate universe where your soul is stored in fabric, some sort of garment or accessory you have to keep safe. At least in that universe it would be easier to keep your daemon close to your heart. Scarves don’t often go wandering off on their own.

He really needs that coffee.

The canteen is empty, unsurprising given the weak rays of sunlight just barely peeking over the edge of the horizon. Everyone will be up soon, but for once Phil has beaten them and he has the small room to himself.

Well, almost.

Bernie is in the kitchen, clattering around among a pleasant sizzling and swelling of smells. His lunches and dinners are usually decent, but it’s his breakfast pastries and desserts that are really delicious, and that’s all you need to win Phil over. 

And of course Adra is there, close at his heels. But Phil’s not thinking about that.

Bernie’s not from Rawtenstall and he isn’t a regular fixture on Phil’s father’s boats, but he comes up through the area regularly enough to be a familiar face, and Phil’s father is always happy to give him work when he has it. He says Bernie is a hard worker, and that he could probably use the help. Phil used to ask what he meant by that, but he’d always just shake his head and get quiet. Phil’s never actually said more than a few polite greetings to Bernie, but there’s nothing about his appearance that would indicate he could use help. When he was younger he’d thought it was perhaps because he traveled so much, but he hasn’t thought about it in a while.

Phil goes to grab a cup of coffee, the metal of the cup heating faster than Phil moves, scalding his skin as he hurries over to a table facing the kitchen to sit. He wonders what breakfast will be this morning. He wonders if Bernie can be persuaded to give him some early.

He’s just about to accidentally on purpose set his cup down a bit too heavily to announce his presence when Bernie pops his head up to the window connecting the two rooms, a cautious smile spreading across his face. Phil smiles back weakly, wondering what he could have done to earn such an enthusiastic greeting—Bernie often smiles or nods at him, but in a quiet, unobtrusive sort of way—when the first part of last night comes back to him in a rush.

Oh, right. He’s the cook. Of course he was here last night for the spectacle. Phil’s suddenly not feeling hungry anymore regardless of what sort of breakfast Bernie is working on.

He’s sure the panic is showing on his face as he fumbles his way up out of his seat, nearly tripping over Adra, but he can’t find it in himself to care. He’s managed to spill the rest of his coffee and is more than ready to leave it behind when Bernie calls out after him.

“Phil, wait.”

“I forgot I had to—”

“I just wanted to speak for a moment, if you don’t mind. Just a moment.” 

His voice is gentle and the specific request makes Phil pause in his flight. He glances instinctively down at Adra to read his body language, but he’s still curled in a tight ball behind Phil. If he didn’t know any better, Phil would think he’d fallen asleep, but he does, and he’s very familiar with Adra’s avoidance tactics. “I don’t bite, promise. Can’t say the same for Alvis.” As he says this, he gestures down to his breast pocket, the small black nose of a hedgehog poking out to sniff tentatively at the air.

There’s no way to _know_ the sex of someone else’s daemon really, aside from markers on their animal form or assumptions from their name, but you can often get a sense, similar to how you can tell an animal from a daemon without being able to actually describe the differences. Phil’s never actually seen Bernie’s daemon, and as he crawls out of Bernie’s breast pocket and scrambles onto his shoulder, spines on his back flexing as he yawns, Phil does a double take. The kind he hates receiving. Bernie’s just watching patiently, calm smile still in place.

Phil stares, wondering if he’s meant to say something now. What should he say? He’s never met anyone else with a daemon the same sex as them, aside from his grandma, but they never spoke about it and Phil was too young when she died to have much to say about it yet anyway. He still doesn’t really. 

The silence stretches on, and Phil thinks he should definitely be saying something by now. This feels like an opportunity—a rapidly disappearing one—to do something important. What, he doesn’t know. He doesn’t have anything to say. He’s never felt this mixture of emotions, of feeling in a moment like he knows something very intimate and important about this near stranger that must connect them, but also completely at a loss of how to connect. 

Except, maybe, when he talks to Dan and feels all at once like he’s saying everything Phil’s ever wanted to hear and also speaking in a foreign language.

Bernie takes pity on him finally, smile faltering for a moment as he begins to speak.

“I want to be able to tell you something useful. A secret that makes it all make sense, or that things will get better. They _will_ , I think. They are. But…I still keep Alvis in my breast pocket most of the time.”

“Okay,” is all Phil can say in response, his voice horribly shaky, hand reaching out for Adra before he catches himself.

“That’s my decision, though. Our decision. And it’s not all the time. Obviously when we’re alone. Or with my husband.” 

Finally, Adra perks his head up, shifting smoothly into a red squirrel and clambering onto the table. Alvis climbs down Bernie’s arm to meet him and they touch noses briefly before moving over to huddle on the far end of the table in their own conversation. Phil watches them for a moment.

“Only then?” Phil finds himself asking, half hoping to hear a yes, half fearing it. If he had his way, Adra would be far more cautious. But he knows Adra hates it and, if he’s really honest with himself, there’s a part of him that hates it too. Like any of his old hiding places for when the world got too much or too mean, small and dark and still, but cramped. Stagnant air, stagnant thoughts.

“The Romani are more comfortable with it; they don’t give us any trouble. My husband is Romani; I’m half myself. So around them Alvis tends to be a little braver. Keeping him here,” he says as he pats his breast pocket, “isn’t…what I would choose. I don’t know how necessary it is anymore. Times have changed some. Enough. It’s just been a hard habit to break. Your daemon doesn’t seem to have that problem, though. Mighty bold thing he did last night.”

They both turn to look at Adra, who stares back at Phil defiantly. His tail twitches, and then he’s a woodpecker, the bright red stripe on his head loud and brash. Phil hadn’t expected anything like this after his subdued mood this morning and he can’t help but glare a bit. When he turns back to Bernie, he’s watching them carefully.

“You two disagree about this?”

Phil really shouldn’t respond, doesn’t want to bring anyone else into their mess, but maybe an outside perspective is what they need. And it’s not like Adra’s been keeping a tight lid on his feelings around others. Certainly not Dan.

“I didn’t know it was possible for people and their daemons to disagree so much, honestly.”

Bernie lets out a booming laugh and Alvis shakes out his spines in a wave along his little body.

“Oh trust me, that’s completely normal. I don’t think _everyone_ does, but I think most do more than they let on. And if you’ve got something you’ve got to work out, I think it’s natural for the two of you to butt heads. You’re just trying to figure things out. People aren’t just one thing. We’re a bunch of things pressed together. Plus we change. Once you think you’ve got something sorted out, a new thing pops up. Even just you, not thinking about your daemon. Don’t you have things you don’t agree with yourself on sometimes?”

Phil’s brain spins emptily for a moment, trying to process the words, and also the concept of himself without Adra. Even—or perhaps especially—after their separation last night, Phil still can’t imagine a world where he’s just him without Adra; it’s inconceivable. But at the same time, it does make a certain sort of sense. Before bringing Adra’s feelings into it, Phil does often feel conflicted over—well, almost everything at the moment if he’s being really honest.

“So we won’t break?” Phil hates his voice in this moment, wavering and raw and so, so fragile. Adra’s shifted again, a moth fluttering nervously around his head, setting down lightly on his hair then his shoulder then the back of his hand before taking flight again. Alvis has returned to their end of the table as well, burrowing under Bernie’s broad hand.

“Goodness,” Bernie says, leaning his weight into the words as he leans forward on the table, brow creased heavily, “no. No. Where did you get that idea? No, this won’t break you. I don’t think there’s such a thing as—well, it doesn’t bear discussing. But you’re allowed to disagree. It’s not that dire.”

He doesn’t know about what happened after the mess hall, so the words ring a bit empty. Aren’t they already broken? Phil wants to believe them nonetheless. The conversation is starting to weigh on Phil, though, and he searches for something a little lighter to give himself some room to breathe. The next question he comes up with is barely better, though.

“What does it mean?” He glances down at Adra, then over at Alvis, in case Bernie hadn’t caught his meaning.

Bernie sighs, and Phil feels the weight of it against his own chest, the trapped breath always sitting behind his ribs, heavy and waiting for release. “I don’t know. Sometimes I don’t think it means anything. My husband’s daemon is female. He still loves me the same way I love him. We have another friend whose daemon is female, but she’s only interested in men. I don’t think there are any clear cut rules.”

“Why not?”

Bernie just shrugs, and Alvis speaks up for the first time, voice squeaky and a bit unsteady, but clear. “Well, we’re souls, aren’t we? Expecting souls to come in just two preset modes seems a bit silly, doesn’t it? To try to express the entirety of humanity.”

Alvis’ words sound a bit like that too and Phil desperately wants to grab him, shake a bit to knock loose the secret to this perspective Phil still finds so baffling. He wants rules. He wants guidelines and set patterns and for someone to tell him what it means, who he is and how he should act. How is he meant to keep going when everyone seems so certain that he’s doing things wrong, but they won’t tell him what’s right?

Phil almost says that’s how people work, but he stops himself, thinking again of Dan. Of his fluid, comfortable words, and how they wind effortlessly around all of this, as if it’s simple. Or as if the complexity makes it easier to navigate somehow. He thinks of Dan avoiding female pronouns for Cae. Avoiding pronouns altogether. Asking Phil what it means to be a man, why there can’t be something other than that. Something outside that, Phil thinks Dan said. He thinks it probably means something, but he still can’t quite wrap his head around what that could possibly be.

“What if—what if someone’s daemon wasn’t male or female at all?”

Adra shifts again, now a brown bird flapping loudly next to Phil’s face, chirping wordlessly. Bernie watches Adra’s display with slightly narrowed eyes. He probably assumes Phil’s talking about them, about Adra. He finds himself surprisingly okay with that.

“I haven’t come across anything like that, not that I know of anyway, but I suppose it’s possible. Seems about as possible as anything else, really.”

Adra stops shifting finally, landing heavily on Phil’s shoulder as a numbat and his weight feels welcome. So still no rules, but a widening horizon, a branching rivers of options. Maybe there is something to the release of letting go of the rules entirely. Phil’s always spent so much time worrying about doing the right thing, never being wrong. How much more time would he have if there were no such thing?

Adra moves on his shoulders, pressing a cold nose to the back of his neck, and huffs out a little breath. Phil lets himself enjoy the proximity.

Bernie is patient, quiet. Alvis has climbed back up into his pocket, but his head is still sticking out, watching Phil and Adra with soft eyes. It’s a new kind of observation for Phil, one that doesn’t make the back of his neck prickle. He wonders how long Bernie has been in the background, completely invisible to Phil, carrying around this secret in his pocket that unites them.

Another puff of warm, damp air against the sensitive skin of Phil’s neck and a gentle psychic nudge from Adra, and he shifts his mind a bit to the side, wondering how long Bernie held that secret in his pocket, feeling alone, feeling other. Is that what he was feeling? Maybe Phil shouldn’t assume it’s been the same for him. What has he been through that Phil has never experienced, could never imagine? 

Adra shouldn’t have to remind him to do that. But maybe it’s okay; maybe it’s part of the process of learning. Maybe it’s part of the point of having a part of you outside yourself, able to disagree and point out missteps and encourage you to keep going.

He owes Adra an apology.

He’s known that this whole time, but the thought finally rises above the thick fog of feeling wronged, feeling hurt, feeling owed his own apology. He wants to go do that now, clear the last bit of lingering doubt at having Adra pressed close to his skin again after what happened last night.

But first he feels like he needs to do something. It shouldn’t feel this awkward, he thinks, just trying to ask something about themselves. It speaks, perhaps, to how thoroughly he’s isolated himself, especially in the past few years. He searches for something simple, something that says he cares, he’s reaching out too. Something specific to what he knows about Bernie, however little that is.

Maybe it’s a little bit of practice for someone else he knows he should do this with too.

He settles, after another pause too long to be natural that’s tolerated graciously nonetheless, on a question he thinks maybe Bernie doesn’t get asked much.

“What’s he like?” Phil asks.

“Who?” 

Phil blushes at the non-sequitur, and at the prospect of actually saying the word, but luckily Bernie seems to catch on. 

“My husband, you mean?”

“Yes.” Everytime he says the word it sends a jolt through Phil, equal parts thrilling and terrifying. If his reaction isn’t damning enough, Adra keeps squeaking and rustling his showy tail about.

“His name is Dirk.” It’s said with a smile, a warmth that Phil can’t help but melt into, just a little. “He travels a lot, which is part of why I come up North every so often, to spend time with him. We met when we were 17, but it took us a while to get ourselves sorted out. Neither of our daemons had settled yet,” he says with the slightest nod towards Adra. For once it feels like kindness, rather than a judgement. “I fell in love with him pretty much instantly, but he thought I was a bit of an idiot. I was, actually.” He chuckles, staring off into the distance for a moment with a fond crease around his eyes. Alvis has burrowed back into the cover of his pocket. “He’s brave and strong and kind and always trying to help everyone. He doesn’t put up with any of my nonsense, either, which I need.”

“And…” Phil hesitates, not sure which possible answer to this question he’s more afraid of. It feels almost silly to ask with the smile lingering on Bernie’s face, but he still has to ask, feels the need to know pressing against the back of his teeth. “Are you happy?”

“Mostly. We’ve got the same squabbles and gripes as any couple. But I love him, and I love my life with him. Even if it can be a bit more difficult sometimes.”

Phil remembers again, with a sudden pang, his father telling him solemnly that Bernie could use some help. He wonders why his father felt so compelled to be the one to offer it to Bernie, with a clattering, rattling fear consuming his head for a moment.

It must be visible on his face, because Bernie clears his throat and Phil looks up to see a pained expression on his face. 

“But I—I don’t want you to think it being difficult makes it less worthwhile. A lot of life is harder than we’d like it to be, I think. I’m not—I don’t think I have anything figured out enough to really be telling you what to do or how to feel. I just wanted to say, I guess, that you’re not alone. Things like this get hidden away, and trick you into thinking you’re more outside the norm than you actually are. I know it probably felt painful, but I thought what your daemon did was beautiful. It meant a lot to us. I just wanted to tell you that. Being able to see that was…it makes me hopeful.”

His words feel like a weight on Phil, not unfamiliar to the weight of Adra against his shoulders at the moment. Welcome but demanding at the same time, overwhelming in the magnitude, confusing in the precise shape of them, how they slot into Phil. Does he want those words? The responsibility of them? He didn’t do any of it. It was Adra, fur currently puffing out against Phil’s skin, probably in pride. Phil shares in that feeling for a moment, then decides to push it aside for now.

It can be examined later. 

For now he needs some time to himself. Some time with Adra.

He downs the remainder of his coffee, gone cold and brassy by now, and stands. 

“Thank you, Bernie. I—this helped,” he finishes simply, unable to put into words the rest of what he’s feeling. His gratitude, his fears, the bewildering mix of affirmation and uncertainty this conversation has set loose in his chest.

“I’m glad. I’m here anytime, really. And tell Dan I say hi, would you? I haven’t seen him in a while.”

Of course he and Dan have talked. Of course Dan had charmed him, had gotten to know him.

“I will,” Phil says, not knowing if he means it or not. Speaking to Dan right now feels impossible. There’s a lot to catch him up on.

Bernie sends him off with a pastry in his hand, though Phil doubts he will be able to eat it. By the time they get back to their room, the clarity in his resolution to apologize to Adra has dissipated, and all he’s left with is a growing pit in his stomach, threatening to swallow him whole. How can he put into words his own hurt, the hurt he caused Adra, the hurt they built together, step by step away from one another.

His feet move forward without him thinking about it, just as Adra shifts, a large, fluffy maned lion pressing into Phil’s space. He sinks into it, face pressed into the puff of fur, arms wrapped around his massive shoulders. It could signal defiance again, a stance against Phil and his constant urge to conceal, but Phil’s sure somehow that’s not how he meant it.

He hadn’t transformed into a lion in the mess hall, after all. His lion form had always been something meant specifically for them. Something warm and soft for Phil to snuggle up to as a baby, a playmate as they both grew older, a point of silent, defiant pride when it became suddenly controversial. Private, but all the more meaningful for that. Phil knows what the lion form means to both of them, and he lets it mean that now, lets that be enough.

“I’m sorry,” he finally whispers, getting a tuft of mane in his mouth as he speaks, voice trembling to match the vibration of his body.

“Me too. I shouldn’t have—”

“They know. You’re right, they all know.”

“Still, I didn’t have to shove it in their face like that. I shouldn’t have done it to you like that.”

“I know,” is all Phil says, all he can say. It’s true. It’s also true that this is something he can’t tell Adra not to do. It’s them, but it’s also Adra and Phil, and where they meet is important, but where they don’t is just as true. “I shouldn’t have told you to leave.”

“I could have stayed,” Adra responds simply. 

They let the rest of it go unsaid. Phil buries his face deeper into Adra’s mane and eventually Adra knocks him back onto the floor to lay his weight on top of him, pressing Phil down until he feels like nothing could ever unsettle him again.

Of course there are plenty of things right at the edges of Phil’s attention waiting to unsettle him. There’s still so much they haven’t worked out, so much they haven’t apologized for, so much they haven’t even realized is amiss, most likely. Phil feels heavy with it and slow and sore and stiff but Adra’s constant weight on top of him makes it feel like less, like something he doesn’t have to pick up right now. He can set it aside for later and for now focus on them, just them, like this.

* * *

They can go farther apart without pain now, and it feels a lot like being broken, despite what Bernie said yesterday. Phil tries not to think like that, doesn’t say it out loud, but he thinks Adra might feel the same. He can’t decide if their synchronicity in this one specific area is encouraging or just another sign that something is seriously wrong. He wants to ask Martyn, or his mum, or Cornelia if they ever went through anything even remotely like this, but he also desperately wants to keep this ugly, broken part of him hidden from them. What if they haven’t? Could they look at him the same way if they knew some of the things he’s thought about his daemon? That Phil and Adra willingly spent a night apart? They still haven’t fully tested their new range yet, and Phil is petrified to learn the extent of it.

There is one person he could ask, of course. It’s so obvious that Adra doesn’t even bother pointing it out, but Phil continues to push it to the side for now. He doesn’t feel quite ready. He knows Dan will be honest regardless of how awful the answer. Then again, Cae and Dan may have separated first, but they still haven’t interacted since it happened, so in some ways Phil’s the expert between the two of them. It’s not something he’s ever wanted to be an expert in, and he doesn’t have any insights to offer anyway.

Still, if talking to Bernie taught him anything, maybe he should try discussing it with Dan whether or not either of them have any answers.

But Phil’s got more important things to sort out first.

They test it, slowly, carefully, like methodically prodding at the edges of a healing bruise. That morning, early enough that the sun’s barely out and most of the ship is still asleep, Phil crosses the room, hand resting on the doorknob as he watches Adra staring intently back at him from the bed. After he walks through, Phil leans on the other side of the door, cheek pressed to the wood, devoid of the normal twang of taut pain that would normally be chiming up by now. He takes small steps down the hall, pausing every three or four, waiting to feel something.

He doesn’t. 

He makes it to the end of the hall before he turns and sprints back, not because of any sort of pain, but for fear of the lack of it. When he finally manages to get the door open again with fumbling fingers, Adra is still seated on the bed, ears laid flat against his head. Phil sinks to the floor, back pressed against the closed door, panting.

About an hour later Phil makes it to the door of the canteen before he has to turn back, and by noon he’s able to keep himself composed long enough to get some coffee, hands trembling as he pours it. After a moment’s hesitation he grabs one for Dan too, and he leaves it outside Martyn’s door with a quick knock to alert him. When he returns Adra gets up from the bed and shifts into a weasel, winding his body around Phil’s legs.

It isn’t until dinnertime, with his plate balanced on his knees in his lonely room, that Phil is ready to admit what he’s missing. Well, ready to let Adra admit it for him, anyway.

“When are you going to get him?” Phil asks, immediately shoving a forkful of food into his mouth afterwards. Adra, now an owl, turns his unblinking gaze on Phil.

“Excuse me?”

“Dan? Aren’t you worried about him?”

“I am, yes.” Adra says slowly, turning his head away from Phil until it rotates back around to look him in the eye again. “Why? Are you?”

“I mean, worried is a strong word. But he’s probably feeling pretty rough by now.”

“Probably.”

“And he hasn’t had anyone to talk to.”

“I’m sure Martyn’s been by to talk to him.”

“Right.”

They fall to silence. Phil doesn’t have anything else to say, aside from what he knows Adra wants him to say aloud. What Phil’s trying to avoid saying out loud. That he’s feeling guilty. That he’s curious how Dan’s doing. That he’s worried about Dan and worried about himself and wants to talk to Dan about it because Dan always seems to know how to make Phil’s peculiarities feel normal somehow and Phil would really like to feel normal for just a tiny bit at the moment. That he misses Dan’s company, fraught though it often is.

Phil goes back to his game of Solitaire. When they were younger, around 12 or 13, Phil had tried to get Adra to play cards with him. It was a period of his life when he was low on friends, and Martyn only had so much patience for playing games with his baby brother. Adra _could_ play cards if he took the form of a monkey, but it never quite worked. Adra said it felt vaguely uncomfortable, and they could tell what cards the other had anyway. 

He’d tried reading, but his attention wasn’t holding long enough to remember the start of a sentence by the time he got to the end of it. Even the card game is starting to feel a little too sedentary, and he’s about to propose a walk—not that Adra has to come with him anymore—when there’s a knock on the door. 

Phil shoots to his feet, his heart rate spiking. Maybe he doesn’t have to go anywhere after all. 

“Come in,” Phil says finally, his voice catching a bit. He’s clearing his throat as Martyn comes in, and he tries not to let his disappointment show.

“Is it Dan? Is he alright?”

Hebe clambers on top of Adra and presses his ears down against his head, chirping playfully into his mane while Martyn smirks at Phil.

“Dan’s fine. I mean, you know, as fine as he’s going to be. I just wanted to tell you that we’re making our last delivery tomorrow morning. It’ll be close by, but we’ll have to wait until it gets dark. So just one more night.”

“And you’re telling me to go get Dan so you can have your room back.”

“No, I’m fine sharing with Jack.”

“What about Dan though?”

“Honestly he looks a little less stressed since he’s gotten some space from you.” 

Phil just rolls his eyes. It’s got the cadence of Martyn making fun of him, but he wonders how much truth there is to it. Maybe he should just leave Dan alone.

“Fine. Is that all you wanted to tell me?”

“I wanted to check in on you too. How are you doing?”

Phil freezes. He hadn’t even considered it before, distracted by the possibility of news about Dan, but now he can feel sweat starting to form on his palms. Can Martyn tell what’s happened to him and Adra? Can he see it between them like a physical fracture? Why hadn’t Phil considered that this too would be obvious to everyone who sees them? He’s momentarily caught between horror and relief. At least then someone else would know and maybe it would feel a little less heavy.

“Why?” It comes out defensive and he can see Martyn adjusting, reconfiguring his face into a look of nonchalance. 

“I heard about what Adra did in the canteen. Marcus told me you looked upset. I just wanted to make sure you were okay.

Right. How the hell had Phil forgotten about that? It seems so far away now. He can still feel the jolt of fear and shame and anger and all those emotions that had been poured up into that bottle and shaken over the years, pressure slowly rising.

Phil almost asks why Martyn hadn’t come to check on him sooner, but he already knows the answer. Martyn knows Phil, knows it’s better to leave him alone for a bit to sort out his feelings before trying to comfort or talk to him. Still, lashing out would be the easiest thing to do here, the thing Phil’s grown most accustomed to. And it could help distract from the thing that still might become obvious if Martyn’s given the chance to notice. It takes most people a moment to notice Cae is missing. With enough time looking, maybe they’ll notice something off between him and Adra.

He doesn’t want to fight though. He looks over to see Hebe still rubbing her face into Adra’s mane, whispering into his ear in between soft clicking sounds.

“I’m okay. I might not go back into the canteen during mealtimes for the rest of my life, but I’m...it’s okay.”

“If it helps I don’t think it was as big a deal as you think.”

Phil just levels him with a skeptical look.

“I mean people were talking about it, but they’ve mostly stopped now. No one cares that much.”

Phil knows Martyn’s trying to help, and he doesn’t know how to explain why Martyn’s dismissal feels like part of the problem. Maybe Phil’s wrong. Maybe no one cares and he’s been making up all the second looks and narrowed eyes and laughs a few paces behind him. But Martyn still hasn’t named the thing that no one cares about, and that feels like confirmation. 

It’s a conversation they’ve had countless times, but never actually named.

Explaining all of this to Martyn, though, would take more energy than Phil has at the moment, and more time than he feels comfortable spending with someone who might eventually notice what’s really amiss and start panicking.

It doesn’t escape Phil that someone who has never shied away from naming Phil’s difference and would likely not overreact if he noticed the difference in Phil and Adra is readily at hand. Phil just needs to figure out how to apologize to him. Or whatever it is he needs to do to smooth out the wrinkled tension between them.

“Thanks Martyn,” Phil says finally. “I appreciate it. Really.” He takes a moment to draw in a deep breath, then makes eye contact while he says, “Everything.”

This earns him a quick hug, followed by a clap on the back.

“Try to get some sleep,” Martyn says, his voice a little thick until he clears it. “Tomorrow night will be long.”

Phil lasts all of five minutes after Martyn leaves before he’s on his feet again, moving quickly towards the door.

“And where are you going?” Adra’s low rumble of a voice from behind him is like a hook pulling him back.

Phil hasn’t had the heart to test their ability to communicate wordlessly since it happened, but he doesn’t think lying right now would work anyway. Adra knows perfectly well where he’s going.

“I’m just going to go check on Dan.”

“Martyn told you he’s fine.”

“I want to see for myself. Why are you giving me such a hard time? I know you want me to. Are you coming or not?”

Adra startles, like he’d forgotten it was an option to not follow. He doesn’t hesitate though, just draws himself up onto his paws, a slow reluctance to his movements still there to tease Phil.

Phil rolls his eyes and turns his back to open the door. He feels a weight settle on his shoulder as he steps onto the deck, and turns to see Adra ruffle his green feathers, his sharp woodpecker beak swishing through the air near Phil’s ear.

It takes longer than Phil would like to admit to knock on the door when they get to Martyn’s room. It’s Adra who finally takes the initiative, leaning forward to rap at it with his beak. Phil can hear a quick shuffling, then a few seconds of silence.

“Come in,” Dan finally calls.

He’s clearly shocked to see Phil on the other side of the door rather than Martyn, but he doesn’t look quite as disappointed as Phil did earlier. At least Phil thinks he doesn’t.

“Phil,” he breathes out, raising his hand as if to wave, then stuffing it quickly behind his back. He glances over at Adra for a brief, charged moment, and Phil could almost swear it’s them who can speak without words.

“Hi.”

“Come in,” Dan repeats, because Phil still hasn’t moved. Adra takes the cue and flutters off Phil’s shoulder, landing on Martyn’s bed with a soft thwump, rolling into a tight ball of armored brown plates. Phil takes that as a message that he’s not going to be getting any help here.

Dan eventually moves to sit on the bed as well, a careful distance between him and Adra. Phil follows him into the room, stopping about a metre away from the foot of the bed.

“How are you feeling?” Phil manages to get out after about a minute of painful silence. He doesn’t really need to ask. Dan doesn’t look well. This is by far the longest he’s been away from Adra since they’d found him, and it shows in the deep bags under his eyes and the sag of his shoulders as he leans against the wall. 

“Fine.”

Phil frowns at him, and Dan just frowns right back, as if daring him to disagree.

“I thought maybe some time with Adra would be helpful,” Phil says instead. He’s never actually acknowledged Adra’s effect on Dan aloud to him, and he feels his cheeks warming.

“Honestly I don’t know how much of a difference it makes at this point. I haven’t died yet; one more day probably won’t kill me.”

Phil doesn’t know where to go from here. Time with Adra was the one thing he had to offer Dan and he doesn’t know how to go about offering his own company instead.

“You look like crap though.”

“Wow, thanks mate.”

“I just meant I can tell you’re not actually fine. It’s okay to admit you need our help.”

“That’s pretty rich coming from you,” Dan mutters, picking at the sole of his shoe. He sighs forcefully, then looks back up. “I don’t want you to feel like you have to spend time with me because you feel guilty. I’ll be fine. I’ve spent plenty of time alone before.”

Not without Cae, Phil wants to protest. Not since they’d separated and Dan was really, truly alone. The subtle difference in his connection with Adra since it happened to them is enough to hold Phil’s jaw in a constant clench, and that’s with Adra right next to him.

“I don’t feel guilty. I wanted…I wanted to talk to you.” Phil settles onto the very edge of the bed.

“Oh? What about?”

Phil springs back up to his feet. “Do you want a coffee? I can go get us coffee. I’ll—”

“Oh my god, no one else drinks coffee at 9 pm, Phil. No thank you.”

“Tea?”

“No. I’m good. If you want to talk you should talk.”

Phil takes a deep breath. No one seems interested in indulging him today. He probably deserves it, but he hadn’t planned on having to work so hard to get Dan to talk about everything. Their conversations normally got there eventually despite Phil’s best efforts. So he’ll just have to plunge in on his own. 

He sits back down on the corner of the bed.

“Do you ever feel broken?”

“Wow. Okay. Wow. I was not expecting that. Um, like generally or—”

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have asked. I shouldn’t be here. I’m going to go—”

“Can I ask why you asked me that?” Dan says softly, leaning back against the wall and pulling the pillow onto his lap.

“I’m just gonna go. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have bothered you. If you need anything—I can leave Adra with you tonight, if you want.”

“And how exactly do you plan to do that?”

Phil doesn’t reply, just makes brief, panicked eye contact for the first time since he asked that stupid question. His eyes flick down to Adra, who finally pops out of his ball and looks between the two of them. Phil feels the shift in the bed as Dan leans forward, hands gripping at his knees.

“What happened?”

“We, um, we had an argument.”

“Did I—”

“No, I think this was always going to happen. I think there’s something wrong with us.”

“There’s nothing wrong with you, Phil. Either of you.” 

He says it with such conviction that Phil can’t help but believe him, just a little, just for the moment.

“Obviously something went wrong.”

“Maybe. But witches do this on purpose, right? So maybe it’s not that bad. My mum and Aeolus never seemed broken. They always treated it as a good thing.”

“But what if it’s different? We didn’t do it on purpose, not really. And we’re not witches. What if it’s not a good thing for us? What if…” Phil can’t finish his thought. He can’t face the idea that something about them might be irreparably damaged. The words come out anyway. “What if we can’t go back.”

“There are plenty of places and times you can’t go back to. I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing either. Most of the other times in my life I wouldn’t want to go back to.”

Phil can’t relate to this, but he also finds it hard to believe.

“Not even when you were little? With your mum?”

Dan pauses again before answering. It feels more like him taking his response seriously than any reluctance on his part to talk about this. “I think that was when I was happiest, for sure. But I don’t know if it was better, or if I would go back. Then I’d still have all this shit to wade through afterwards. And I’d know it’s coming. Now I’ve dealt with it and I know more about myself. I’m not....I don’t think I’m happy, really, but I think my current self has a better chance of being happy in the future.”

It takes Phil a while to sort through Dan’s words. When he’s done he’s still not sure if he agrees. Simpler and happier seem better to him unequivocally. Whole seems better. 

“Maybe,” is all he says in the end. Because he doesn’t know how to argue Dan’s point, and disagreeing feels a little like dismantling a useful tool Dan has built for himself.

“I’m sorry,” he adds after another pause.

“For what?” Dan asks, and it sounds like a genuine question, rather than him fishing for a better apology, like Martyn often does.

“I’ve been really rude to you.”

“That’s alright. It’s been a stressful few days. You don’t have to like me, you know. I’m kind of annoying.”

Phil just manages to catch the words “I do” before they fly out of his mouth. “You are,” he says instead with a smile, “but you’re less annoying than Martyn.”

“So of your two options for company, I’m the slightly less obnoxious one?”

“Cornelia would be my first choice, but she’s not here.”

“Totally fair,” Dan nods. He’s grinning now too, and for a split second it feels easy. But then Phil goes and opens his mouth again.

“You can come back. If you want. To our room. The room. I’m sure Martyn wants his bed back,” Phil adds hastily, his attempt at nonchalance falling flat.

“Do you want me to?”

And of course Dan’s not going to make this easy for him.

“I asked, didn’t I?” Phil replies, feeling his frustration rising. Adra reaches his two pointed front feet up to rest on Phil’s thigh, looking up at him encouragingly. 

“If you’re only asking because you feel like you have to—”

“I’m not. It’s just—it’s really quiet. I got used to your noise. You’re really loud.”

Dan snorts and rolls his eyes, but there’s a subtle jitteriness to his movements that Phil’s just starting to catch on to.

“Before I come back I want to tell you something.”

“Okay.” 

Dan doesn’t say anything though, just sits there tugging at his own fingers. 

“I just-—you said that thing about me thinking it’s funny or weird or whatever that Adra’s male.”

“That was—it was more about me. If you say it doesn’t matter to you, I believe you.” Mostly, but Phil doesn’t need to go into that now.

“Well, it does matter a bit.” Phil freezes. “I mean, like in a good way, though. It’s one of the reasons I trusted you when I got here, more than anyone else.” 

It feels like Dan’s lit a fire inside of Phil. He remembers Dan’s initial hesitation when Martyn had called his daemon ‘her,’ remembers wondering—

“Why? Is Cae...” He trails off, unable to make the assumption again, this time aloud.

“Not male. Sort of—” He cuts himself off with an impatient sigh, then starts up again on a completely different track as if they were connected. “But…I don’t really know…no one I’ve ever told this to really seems to know how to react, so I’m not sure how to-—my mum said it’s fairly common among witches. I mean, still not, like, the norm. But not unheard of and better understood and accepted, at least by some of the clans. I didn’t actually know growing up that it was weird or anything. And, like I said earlier, some of my mum’s friends who would visit us, they had female daemons. So variation seemed normal to me, or, really, I didn’t think about it at all—”

“Dan!” Phil breaks him off, laughing. “You’re rambling and I have no idea what you’re trying to tell me.”

“Cae is—well…” Dan draws in a deep breath then finally meets Phil’s gaze, “they don’t really…identify as either. Male or female.”

“Oh.” 

The word leaks out of Phil’s mouth before he can really react at all, and as he watches Dan stiffen, he tries to assess how he feels about this new information. Mostly he’s shocked, and a bit confused, even though he had asked Bernie if he thought it was possible just yesterday. He hadn’t actually thought it might be true. Adra flattens his ears, and Phil knows it’s a warning. 

“Okay. That’s—” 

Phil was about to say ‘that’s alright,’ but he catches himself, because he hates it when people say that to him, as if they’re giving him permission to be the way he was born. 

“Thank you for telling me.”

“That’s it? You don’t have anything to say?”

“I don’t-—I don’t really know what to say. I guess I have a couple of questions, but I don’t want to, you know…” 

Be like everyone else who Phil had ever told, who had ever figured it out. Press and push and niggle his way into somewhere he doesn’t belong.

“So you just have the one daemon?” 

Dan’s smile is thin as he nods, and he doesn’t say anything. 

“And you call her—them, uh, they?”

“Yeah, it’s a gender neutral pronoun. Some witches use it. There’s a couple clans my mum told me about anyway. I don’t think it’s very common among humans, but I’ve met a couple of people who use they/them pronouns.”

“Oh.” Phil pauses, wanting to think before saying anything stupid. “Do you use those pronouns?”

“No,” Dan shrugs. “I don’t really care all that much, but male pronouns don’t bother me.”

“How can you be different from your daemon? Is that a witch thing?” 

Dan breaks out into a grin now, incongruous in the heavy air, setting Phil’s heart pounding.

“I told you, I’m not a witch. I’m a boy. Boys can’t be witches.” His smile is huge now, sarcasm practically oozing from his voice.

“But if your daemon’s not—”

“I’m ambivalent about gender, and yes, that does sort of complicate the concept that only witches’ daughters can be witches. And there are other...irregularities in witch societies and customs that a lot of them are reluctant to acknowledge. Like Errol. He’s trans but he can still do magic, so obviously gender can’t actually dictate that. My mum had a lot of theories and was always trying to scare or sneak magic out of me. Sometimes it worked, sort of. But Cae and I using different pronouns isn’t a witch thing. It’s just…an us thing, I guess. I don’t know. I don’t mind they/them pronouns, and Cae uses them for me sometimes, if they’re referring to me in a way that’s more connected to them. I think…” Dan leans back, head tilted so that he’s looking at the ceiling, legs inching closer to Adra on the bed so that Phil can feel the phantom warmth of the almost touch.

“Your lot all make a really big deal of you and your daemon being one and the same, right? And of course in many ways we are. We can feel what the other is feeling, at least generally. We were born at the same time and we’ll die at the same time. But they can—something can be a part of you, and a whole different thing too, right? We can be more than one thing.”

“I’m not sure I follow completely,” Phil admits, a nervous hand reaching out to find Adra, running a hand across the smooth planes of his back.

“I mean…I guess, you can be something for yourself, and you can be something for others, and the something you are for your daemon is somewhere in between. When it’s just me completely alone in my head, Cae paying attention to something else, I don’t think about my gender. It’s…nothing. When it’s both of us, or especially when it’s us and other people I’m forced to think about it, because they think about it. Then…I don’t really like it, or care, but I’m comfortable enough with people viewing me as a man, whatever that means. Cae doesn’t want that. So they use different pronouns.

“I just thought you should know,” he continues, sounding very suddenly and overwhelmingly earnest, “because I know that it bothers you that Adra is male, so—”

“Dan,” Phil interrupts, a strange sort of dread flooding through him, saying the next words as much for Adra as for Dan. Maybe for himself, too. “ _I_ don’t care. I just don’t like what people assume about me because of it.”

“What do they assume about you?” 

Does Dan really not know? Does Phil have to say it?

Can he?

“That I won’t…be happy. I won’t find happiness in life.”

“Why?”

“Because I’ll never have a wife.”

“And why do you need a wife?”

The tension settles thick between them, and Phil can feel Adra’s hackles raising under his fingers.

“I don’t know.”

“Do you want one?”

“I don’t—I don’t know.”

“Well, that’s fine. You’re only, what, 22?”

This should be enough. It’s more than anyone’s ever given him. But he wants to make sure Dan’s meaning is 100% clear.

“But what if I don’t want one at all?”

“I think that’s fine.”

“What if I want something else?”

“Phil?”

“Yeah?”

“I should probably also mention that I like boys. In the spirit of transparency.”

“Oh,” Phil says, and it feels like all of the oxygen in him falls out of his mouth in that one breath.

“I just wanted to tell you that, so you know. You don’t have to say anything. If it makes you uncomfortable—”

“No! No. I’m fine. It’s—” he cuts himself off, making a decision in the split second it takes Adra to change to a lion, body a long line up the center of the bed. Phil wriggles his way up the blanket until he’s laid out to the right of Adra, feet hanging off the end of the bed.

“Thank you for telling me,” he says into the fur of Adra’s mane.

“Thank you for listening,” Dan whispers back. He reclines slowly, letting himself rest against his elbows, but he doesn’t lie down. “Should I go...somewhere?”

He doesn’t have anywhere to go, of course. Phil’s the one who should leave. He doesn’t belong here. If Martyn came in here and found them—well, maybe it wouldn’t matter all that much. That’s what Martyn’s always claiming, anyway.

“Martyn said we should get a good night’s sleep, since tomorrow is going to be long.” He pauses long enough to count to sixty and for Dan to have worked his way down fully onto the bed on the other side of Adra, body propped against the wall to make sure not to touch. “I can go back to my room.”

“Turn the light out on your way out if you go.”

Dan is good with language when it counts. Precise. He means the words he says and says the words he means. The if bounces between them, fizzling with potential.

Phil reaches over and turns off the lamp.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading! [Tumblr post here](https://phanomeheart.tumblr.com/post/612000709640175616/the-secluded-glade-chapter-57-t-134k-426k).


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the unexplained delay in getting this chapter up! I got sick and then had to deal with switching the rest of the semester of our curriculum online, but I'm back and planning on getting the last chapter up by Wednesday or Thursday at the latest!
> 
> Thanks as always to @insectbah for all of their amazing betaing help!

Phil wakes up to Adra curled up on his chest and Dan’s face pressed into the side of his arm. He moves it away slowly, careful not to wake either of them. He’s surprised to see Adra in this form, his long tongue flicking out to tickle at Phil’s chin with every breath. Adra’s always gravitated towards smallish mammals in general, but a numbat is one of the few forms that Phil doesn’t know the precise meaning of. He’s gotten so used to being able to read Adra’s mood or intent through the form he takes on and Phil stops for a moment to consider what their relationship will be like without that easy form of communication.

Adra settling is one of the things he doesn’t think about. Like the fact that Adra’s male or that he can see the future, sort of, and people expect him to help them because of that. Like the way Dan’s eyelashes look, resting thick and dark and curved against his cheek as he sleeps next to Phil. Things that fill his gut with a roiling sense of fear and want and responsibility and magnitude beyond his ability to process and most of all uncertainty. 

If Adra settles—when Adra settles, he corrects himself reflexively, because of course it’s when, it has to be—it will be an ending. An end to at least one of his many differences, to the surprised double takes and calculating looks he gets when strangers see Adra shift. But an end, too, to the freedom of that stage of their life. It would mean, Phil had always thought, finally growing up for real. Responsibility. Permanence. He doesn’t feel well formed enough to be this version of him for the rest of his life.

And of course it’s also potentially an end to Phil getting away with strangers not seeing their difference immediately. Phil had always dreaded that more than anything. Now, he’s not sure he’d care if Adra settled as a blue whale, as long as they can somehow figure out how to put themselves back together. Maybe they could go live on an island somewhere in the middle of the ocean and Adra could swim around and sing songs and eat krill by the tonnes and Phil could just stand on the shore and watch him wave hello every once in a while with a spray of water from his blowhole.

Maybe Dan and Cae could come with them for a little while and Dan could keep Phil company while Cae and Adra…

Will Cae and Adra even get along? It seems like it should be an obvious yes, but Phil’s gripped with a sudden and inexplicable fear they won’t. Or maybe they will, but Cae won’t settle in a compatible form. Because that matters too, right? What form the daemon of your—

 _What_ , Phil thinks angrily to himself. _The form of your what? Semi-kidnapped charge turned pain in the arse turned maybe sort of friend?_

“I’m not going to settle as a whale, you buffoon,” Adra whispers close into the sensitive skin of his neck. 

Phil whips his head to the side, but Dan’s still sleeping. Or at least pretending to sleep.

“You sound like him, you know,” Phil hisses, gently plucking Adra off his chest and setting him on the bed beside Dan. “I’m going to go get some coffee.

He thinks Adra’s going to let Phil leave without him, but just as Phil reaches for the doorknob he feels a soft thump against his back, and the welcome sensation of sharp claws digging into his skin as Adra clambers onto his shoulders.

Still a numbat, Phil notices.

Adra flicks into the air as a hummingbird, flying a quick, flashy lap around Phil’s head before settling down on his shoulder as a squirrel this time. He seems distinctly disgruntled as he burrows into the neck of Phil’s shirt, scraping his teeth against Phil’s skin more than strictly necessary.

“You can be a numbat if you like,” Phil says as they reach the canteen, his voice low even though the room is nearly empty. They had slept in this morning and Phil assumes the boat has already made its final delivery and left the majority of the crew in Liverpool.

“Oh? Not a whale?”

“Might be a bit inconvenient at the moment,” Phil mutters, nodding at Bernie as he pours himself a cup of coffee and settles himself at the table.

They sit in silence for a while and Phil lets his mind wander, careful to nudge it away from any topics that feel too heavy for his current state of wakefulness. Unfortunately, it seems like that’s most topics, or at least most topics Phil’s brain is interested in thinking about at the moment. Bernie brings him a scone and Phil picks at it listlessly, giving little scraps to Adra for him to nibble on.

Phil’s on cup number three when Adra finally speaks up.

“Are we avoiding Dan again?”

“You can go back anytime you like,” Phil retorts, balling up his last bit of scone and throwing it at the bin. He misses by about a metre.

“Don’t be like that. I don’t like being apart. Do you?”

Phil looks around hastily, but it’s just them and Bernie left at this point, and Bernie is making enough noise in the kitchen that he probably can’t hear.

“Like I would say that with someone else in earshot,” Adra huffs.

Phil draws in a deep breath then places his hand on the table, palm facing up. Adra’s a rat now, and he crawls into Phil’s hand after a moment’s hesitation. He’d amused himself, it seemed, for the past hour or so by flicking through as many small mammals as he could think of. Some forms he only held for a couple of seconds, while others he scurried around in for several minutes, twitching his nose or wiggling his tail. It felt distinctly like he was refreshing his memory, testing them all out, but Phil’s not sure whether he was doing that because he actually wanted to, or because he wanted to tease Phil for his panic earlier.

“Let’s go talk about this in our room,” he says simply. He could have brought up all the things Adra says with plenty of people in earshot. Of the things Adra’s done with plenty of people to see, in this very room just the other day, for starters. But he wants this to be a conversation, not an argument. 

They both stay quiet on the walk to their room, and Phil finds himself wondering if Dan will be there. Phil had left earlier without saying anything to him, and he might wonder where Phil went. Then again, he’s not meant to leave the room, and he’ll probably assume Phil just wanted space again.

Phil hasn’t quite decided if he wants Dan to be there by the time he opens the door, and pushes aside the quick swell of disappointment upon finding it empty. Adra darts to the bed, transforming into a walrus and draping himself languidly across the entire surface, flipper and tail drooping off the edges of the mattress. He looks a bit like he’s melting, a vague forlornness to his round, tusked face only adding to the sense of dramatic exasperation he’s exuding.

“I don’t like being apart either,” Phil says. “Of course not. It still feels bad.”

“Like Dan said.”

Phil bites back the protest that immediately springs to his tongue. “Right, like Dan said. Even though we can, I don’t like doing it.”

“So why do you keep leaving me places?”

Adra is normally the more open of the two of them, and Phil’s come to rely on him to communicate their feelings to others. Now, though, when it’s his own feelings and Adra he needs to explain them to, he’s left feeling a little adrift. 

They feel like things he shouldn’t say aloud.

“I wasn’t sure if you’d want to come,” Phil says finally. He trusts that Adra hears the rest. The clamor of _you didn’t, you left, we broke_ clattering conspicuously behind them.

“Then ask me.”

“What if you say no?”

“We talk about it.”

It sounds reasonable, easy even, stated so plainly like that. Phil knows Adra’s right, knows he should have been paying more attention to Adra’s wants and needs all along, but he still doesn’t know how to handle it when they clash with his own. What it means when they clash, and he’s somehow in such deep conflict with such an essential part of himself.

“Are you going to settle?” Phil asks, finally voicing the fear that’s been looming over him ever since he woke up this morning. Or really since he learned what settling was and that it would happen to him some day.

“Eventually. Right?”

Phil knows he’s not asking permission. This is one thing Adra absolutely has to do, regardless of Phil’s thoughts on it.

“Do you want to settle?” he amends, watching Adra carefully.

“Kind of. More than I used to. I still like being able to change. But I’ve been feeling...stickier.”

Phil doesn’t know the sensation he’s describing of course, but it makes a certain sort of sense when he thinks about the nervous flicking between forms today, cycling rapidly through some then stalling in others. When he thinks about the peculiar sense of heaviness that has settled into his own bones. 

“Do you know what it’s going to be?”

“Wouldn’t tell you if I did,” he squeaks, flickering quickly to a rat before flopping back as a red panda. “But no.”

“Is it because of Dan?” Phil whispers.

Several of his friends growing up had found their daemons settled after having their first kiss, or sleeping with someone for the first time. Phil had often wondered if that’s why Adra still hadn’t settled. He’d been kissed a couple of times, but none of them had felt like they’d counted for anything. Most people he knew, though, could trace their daemon settling around some sort of sexual or romantic awakening in their early to mid teens, so Adra feeling this close to settling right as Phil started lowering the barriers he’d placed between him and Dan seems telling.

Phil doesn’t particularly want to be told.

“No, I don’t think so,” Adra says. “It’s hard...it’s not like there’s one thing that’s obviously causing it. It just feels like...sediment settling back to the bottom of the river after you stir it up.”

He wants to ask what the river is and what’s the sediment and what stirred it up, but he doesn’t really think Adra’s going to give him a clearer answer. He probably can’t. Anyway it’s not going to help. It’s going to happen when it happens, and knowing what’s causing it doesn’t change that.

“Should we go talk to Dan?”

Adra perks up immediately, popping his head up between his legs, his little white eyebrows scrunching together.

“Should we? What do you want to talk about?”

“I don’t know,” Phil hedges, feeling overwhelmed in the face of Adra’s excitement. They hadn’t really left anything unresolved last night. “He’s probably wondering where we got to. We could bring him lunch.”

The food has already been put away by the time Phil goes back to the canteen, but Phil’s able to wheedle a few sandwiches out of Bernie, ignoring his pointed wink when he asks for two plates. As if he hasn’t been getting food for Dan this whole time.

He slows his pace as he draws closer to Martyn’s room, questioning his resolve to talk to Dan. What exactly are they going to talk about? Is Dan going to expect Phil to respond to his confession last night? The second one, anyway. Does he assume Phil has a similar confession to make? He almost turns and runs back to his own room, but Adra slips off his shoulder and presses the slope of his donkey head against Phil’s back until Phil starts walking again.

“One of these days you’re going to settle like that and then we’ll be stuck with you as a donkey for the rest of our life and you’re not allowed to complain when I leave you outside of shops because your great hard head will break everything valuable in sight.”

“At least everyone will always know what an arse you are,” Adra responds, and Phil’s distracted enough by his annoyance to balance the plates of sandwiches in the crook of one elbow and finally open the door to Martyn’s room with his other hand.

“That wasn’t even clever,” Phil says, suddenly faced with a very surprised looking Dan.

“Sorry?”

“Adra, not you. I, er, brought you some lunch.”

“It’s almost 5.”

“Tea, then.”

“Right, thanks.”

They fall into silence as Phil sets the plates on the bed between them. After a moment Phil sits on the bed opposite Dan, leg jostling the mattress and making the plates clack together.

“Have you talked to Martyn?” Dan asks eventually.

“I saw him earlier for a bit. He just said he was strategizing and he’d check in later.”

“Shouldn’t he be strategizing with us?”

“We’re not going,” Phil says, spraying crumbs out onto the blanket. Adra grimaces at him.

“Well you don’t have to go, but I’m—”

“He’s not going to let you go either. He’s got this whole protector complex. And I’m sure my mum made him promise to take care of you too.”

“I’m not going to just sit on the boat when Cae is right there! And I’ll be able to find them easier. He’s mad if he thinks I’m not going in with them.”

“You can argue with him about it,” Phil shrugs, picking the slice of cheese off his second sandwich. He doesn’t really want Dan going in either to be honest, but he also understands why Dan wants to go so badly. If it was Adra in there Phil thinks he’d go too.

They go quiet again and Phil slowly becomes fixated on the loud, wet noises of his own mouth chewing. To distract himself, he asks, “What are you going to do once you find her? Them,” he corrects after a quick nudge from Adra. He wonders if Adra’s had more time to practice, but either way he appreciates the help. He repeats it again a few more times in his head, trying to wear a groove into his brain. 

Dan’s quiet for a long time, and Phil worries for a moment that he’s offended Dan. He opens his mouth to apologize, but then Dan finally speaks.

“I don’t know.” Dan’s usual composure seems to have worn a bit thin, and Phil can hear the nerves shaking his voice. “I definitely don’t want to go back to my dad. We could maybe go back to our old home. My mum wouldn’t be there, but maybe I could try to sort out whatever damage the flood did and just lay low there for a bit.”

“You don’t think they’d be able to find you there?”

Phil watches Dan’s face fall.

“I don’t know. I forgot about that. It’s pretty out of the way, but I don’t know if I’d be able to get all the way down there without anyone noticing me. Martyn showed me one of the signs with my face on it. He had one of the crew members bring it back on board. I think he thought it’d scare me into staying in the room.”

“You can stay with us—”

“Listen. Shut up, please. I don’t think I can make it through another heartfelt offer to let me stay with the Lesters without crying, I really don’t.”

His tone is light but his eyes do look a little red, and Phil doesn’t really know what he’d do if Dan starts crying, so he doesn’t press.

“I’ll figure it out. First I have to find Cae. Then we can work it out together. They were always better at planning anyway.”

“Are you excited to see them?”

Dan doesn’t bother to respond, rolling his eyes before asking, “How are you and Adra doing?” The words creep out of his mouth tentatively and his expression falls into something far more vulnerable. Phil’s instinct is to avoid answering his question, but something tells him that Dan is asking because he’s nervous. Because this will be the first time he sees Cae after they separated. 

“Alright. It’s a little different still, but it’s not bad. Not entirely, anyway. Just sort of...new.”

“We’re sorting it out,” Adra says, speaking up for the first time. He hasn’t addressed Dan directly in front of Phil in quite a while, and Phil glances between the two of them for a moment. Dan smiles at Adra, and Adra winks back at him. Well, blinks really. He’s not any better at it than Phil is.

Normally Phil would feel jealous. He still does, a bit, but it feels messier, not as neatly directed. And he also feels a load of other complicated and unnameable emotions flopping about inside of him. Maybe some of them are nameable. Nothing he wants to name at the moment. The one that lingers the longest is a pressing strangeness. He feels at once like he’s intruding on something and like he’s suddenly a part of something he never signed up for.

Dan’s voice is thick when he speaks up again. “What are you going to do once you’re finally free of me?”

“Probably just doing what I was doing before,” Phil responds, refusing to acknowledge the second half of the question.

“What were you doing before?”

“Just…” What was he doing before? Sulking around his house, sleeping in until 2 pm, avoiding his dad and nagging his mum when he got bored. “I finished my degree a couple of months ago and I’m living at home for a bit while I plan my next steps.”

Not that he was doing any planning, or that he had any steps at all.

“Cool!” Dan says anyway, sounding entirely like he means it. “What did you study?”

“Linguistics. And no, that does not let itself to any practical jobs, before you ask.”

Dan frowns slightly, probably at Phil’s sour tone, but he doesn’t remark on it at all. “What do you want to do, then?”

“Something I’m good at.”

“What are you good at?”

Phil just barely catches himself before he says nothing. Instead he sits and thinks about it for a moment.

“Making scrambled eggs. Repressing my feelings. Coming up with stories.”

“Do those things then. Maybe not the second one quite so much.”

“What, like be a writer? Or start a restaurant?”

“I don’t know how well a restaurant that only serves scrambled eggs would do, but you could definitely write.” 

He says it like it’s easy, just like everything else. The infuriating part is that Phil’s starting to believe him.

“I don’t think I’m any good at writing.”

“Then practice. Or figure out a different way to tell stories.”

“Like what?” Phil asks, genuinely intrigued. Stories aren’t exactly valued by anyone he knows. Mostly he gets told to stop wasting his time on that nonsense and get back to work. At uni he’d met others who were as passionate about storytelling as he was, and the school offered them a certain amount of protection from the Magisterium, which had never been overly keen on unrestrained make-believe, but eventually they had to get back to their studies too. Their real work. Their passions.

“I don’t know mate,” Dan says, deflating Phil’s hope instantly, “this is your dream, not mine.”

“It’s not my dream! You told me to do it.”

“I’m not telling you to do anything. I was just trying to help.”

Phil feels caught between gratitude and frustration. He chooses to deflect rather than respond. “What about you then? What do you want to do?”

“Witch society runs on a gift economy,” Dan says with a shrug. “I’m not actually all that tied to capitalism.” 

“You don’t have any idea of what you want to do next?”

“I do have one stupid thought.”

“What’s that?”

“I kind of want to find those other kids,” Dan says slowly, eyes shifting rapidly between Phil and Adra, then wandering off focus somewhere off to Phil’s left.

“I don’t think you should do that.”

“Why not?”

“It’s too dangerous!” Phil’s protest comes out louder than he’d meant it to. Adra climbs into Phil’s lap and he runs his hands over Adra’s quivering sides, not sure who’s meant to be reassuring who.

“What do you care?”

Phil huffs out a breath, then another. He stands up, shifting Adra to the side, and grabs the plates, then sets them back on the bed. “It’d be stupid if we went to all of this trouble to get you out of there and then Cae too if you just went and got captured again.”

“I doubt the kids are going to be there still, and I feel like shit just leaving them with those people. I, of all people, know what they’re capable of.”

“We can tell the authorities.”

“Phil, come on. It’s the Magisterium. Why didn’t you go to the authorities in the first place if it was that easy?”

“You’re coming back to my house and you’re going to stay there until they stop looking for you and that’s final.”

“Oh, it’s final is it?”

Dan’s standing now too and everything about his posture says he’s livid at Phil, but he also seems to be fighting to hold back a smile and Phil doesn’t quite know what to do all of a sudden with his hands or his voice or any other part of him. Adra remains perched on the bed, a chameleon now with one eye fixed on each of them.

“Yes,” Phil says, managing to sound far more sure than he actually feels. 

“And what exactly are Cae and I meant to do while we’re being held hostage yet again by the Lesters?”

All Phil’s managed to come up with is eat scrambled eggs when they’re interrupted by the door opening.

“Oh good,” Martyn says, breathing a little heavily, “you’re both here. We’re going to head out now. If we don’t come back—”

“I’m coming with you,” Dan interrupts.

“No, you’re not. It’s too dangerous—”

“You can’t just keep telling me that. Everything’s too dangerous. Not finding Cae is too dangerous. If it doesn’t happen now I’m as good as dead anyway. I have a better chance of figuring out where they’re keeping Cae anyway.”

Phil doesn’t think the as good as dead comment is strictly true at this point, but he knows better than to correct Dan when his temper’s rising.

“We’re going to find her Dan.” 

“Them,” Phil corrects before he can stop himself, and Dan flashes him a look that seems to be caught halfway between annoyance and giddiness. He can’t believe he did that, honestly. Aside from still feeling a bit fuzzy on all of the details, one thing Phil is normally very good at is keeping a low profile. If Dan hadn’t ever corrected Martyn on Cae’s pronouns, he probably doesn’t need Phil to be doing it for him.

“Who else are we finding?”

“The other children,” Dan says quickly, rolling his eyes at Phil when Martyn looks away.

“Jack and Jimmy are going to search for them while we’re looking for Cae. I doubt they’re still there, though. The kidnappers know we know where they are and they’d have to be pretty stupid to stick around with the other kids.”

Dan just nods as Phil feels his stomach jolt. Dan had said the same thing a few minutes ago, but it sounds harsher now. Maybe Dan was right about someone needing to go find them. It shouldn’t be Dan though, Phil is sure of that.

“If you don’t let me come with you I’ll just follow you.”

“Phil will keep you here,” Martyn says, turning to Phil and Adra. 

Phil ponders for a moment how exactly Martyn thinks Phil’s going to stop Dan. He imagines them grappling, Phil trying to hold Dan back, pin him down, then quickly diverts his brain from that particular line of thought. 

“I won’t,” he says plainly, hoping his blush isn’t obvious. He sees Dan brighten out of the corner of his eye, but he focuses on Martyn glaring at him. “If Dan wants to go I won’t stop him.”

Dan and Martyn start arguing again, but Phil’s stopped processing their words. Instead, he lets himself fall into the tugging at the edge of his attention, and hears Adra worrying at him, caught between fear for Dan and wanting to do something to help him.

 _We could._ Phil just receives what feels like a giant question mark shoved into his brain.

Phil pauses for a moment, then decides it’s an idea better not thought all the way through. _Do you want to go with them?_ Phil asks.

_You don’t._

_I don’t have to. I could stay here and keep watch and let you know if someone’s coming._

Adra’s thoughts morph into a cacophony of anxiety. He’s a moth flapping clumsily around Phil’s head, but no one save Hebe seems to be paying either of them any mind. 

Phil continues explaining. _It might help them find Cae. It would be safer if someone could let them know if something goes wrong out here._

_Not for us. What if I can’t come back?_

It’s taking an immense amount of concentration to be able to speak this clearly between them, and Phil has to sit down. They’ve never been able to speak in such complete sentences before, but Phil thinks the adrenaline pumping through both of their bodies is helping. And his conviction.

 _Then I’ll come find you. It’s up to you, though,_ he adds after a moment.

Adra doesn’t actually reply, just pushes a wave of assent and gratitude and terror at Phil.

“Adra can go with you,” Phil says loud enough to cut through Dan and Martyn’s continued bickering.

“No, absolutely not,” Martyn says instantly. “I’m not bringing you along too Phil. Mum would kill me.”

“I’m not coming. Adra is.”

“What? That makes no sense,” Martyn says. Adra shifts to a mouse and crawls over to Hebe, perching on top of her head and leaning down to whisper in her ear.

“This is a terrible idea,” Dan says, ignoring Martyn’s complete bafflement. “There’s no need to get the two of you separated like Cae and I.”

“If Adra goes with you I could keep watch out here and tell you immediately if I see anything go wrong. And you could let me know if I need to come help or get the boat ready to leave as soon as you get back. Plus you’ll be safer if you go with a daemon who can shift.”

Dan pauses, clearly seeing some sort of sense in it. Probably not enough for the level of risk, and Phil doesn’t want him to press because he doesn’t know how to explain the rest. His worry for Dan, _their_ worry for Dan. His certainty that this is what they’re supposed to do, despite his adamant refusal to go anywhere near that place up until now.

“What about the maximum distance of your communication?” Dan asks. “You don’t know if you can still do it if you’re far away.”

“Now’s as good a time as any to test it out.”

“There literally could not be a worse time to test it out. If you can’t do it and you split up for nothing and then something happens—”

“Would someone please tell me what is going on?” Martyn insists, physically sticking himself between Dan and Phil to get their attention. “How do you expect Adra to be able to come with us if Phil is still on the boat?”

“We separated. Don’t make a big deal—”

Martyn shifts closer to Hebe, posture going stiff. Phil might be imagining it, but it looks like he angles himself away from Phil ever so slightly. “What? When?” Martyn shouts. “Why? How?”

“It’s a long story. We don’t have time to explain it, but we can help without you actually breaking your promise to mum about me going in there.”

“I’m pretty sure mum meant Adra too when she told me not to let you anywhere near that place.”

“I’ll deal with mum. I want to do this. Adra wants to do this. Let us help.”

Martyn groans and checks his watch. “We shouldn’t wait much longer; it’s a full moon and it’s better if we get there before it rises and gets too bright. Phil, you really think you should do this?”

“It’s the safest way.”

Phil knows how idiotic his words sound. There’s absolutely nothing safe about splitting up with your daemon, even in the most innocuous of circumstances. Dan, of all people, knows this. But it’s also the best strategy they’ve got. The only sliver of something that might work in their favor.

“Fine,” Dan says, finally speaking up again. “Just don’t—Adra shouldn’t shift while we’re in there unless absolutely necessary. And he should stay small. Inconspicuous. They’d love to study him if they knew he hasn’t settled and he—well, you know. So be careful.” He addresses these final words straight to Adra.

Phil feels a little flutter of anticipation run through Adra, then run down his own spine as a question. He takes a moment to gauge his reaction, then nods at Adra. Adra changes to a beetle, flying up to rest softly on Dan’s shoulder. Phil waits a moment for the jolt of nausea, or excitement, or anything really, but he doesn’t feel much at all. Maybe it’s drowned out by everything else coursing through him at the moment. Maybe he had been building it up in his head.

Dan stands frozen, looking down at his shoulder. He appears to be trying to have a silent conversation of his own with Adra. He looks up at Phil finally, eyes wide and slightly red again.

“He can go with Hebe.”

Phil shakes his head. “You have to keep him safe.”

“Of course,” Dan responds instantly.

Phil isn’t actually sure if he’d been asking Dan or Adra to make the promise, so he just nods.

“I still don’t think—” Martyn starts, but Hebe interrupts him.

“Let them decide for themselves.”

“Fine, but for the record this is a terrible idea. Come on,” Martyn sighs, “before I change my mind.”

They meet Jack and Jimmy out on the deck and make their way to the lifeboat and have a quick fight over whether Phil’s allowed to come with them over to the shore, but Phil finally wins it through sheer stubbornness, he’s pretty sure. It won’t actually make all that much of a difference sitting in the lifeboat, but it feels much safer. Well, not safer. But like he might actually be able to help if something goes wrong.

The shore seems like it’s never going to get closer until all of a sudden they’re knocking against it and Jimmy is jumping into the water to pull them closer. He ties the boat to a thick mass of roots hanging down over the edge and offers Dan a hand down into the murky water. Martyn and Jack hoist themselves over the other side, grabbing onto other roots to pull themselves up. Phil stays put without protest this time, watching Adra shift into a chimpanzee to climb up and extend a hand down to Dan. Jimmy and Jack watch in wonder, but they don’t say anything.

Then, suddenly, Phil’s alone. He can still feel Adra in his mind, and he remembers with an acute terror Dan’s words about maximum distance. Even separated Phil has always been able to hear Adra, and losing that too feels insurmountable. But Adra’s there instantly, sending soothing thoughts his way. They’re moving slowly, being careful, nearly halfway through the thicket now. Phil edges the boat a bit to the right so he can get a glimpse of the building, completely dark and still. He and Adra ping small thoughts between them every thirty seconds or so, just because they still can. 

It starts to snow as he waits, fat wet flakes gathering on the boat and Phil’s jacket in a thin dusting, disappearing as they hit the surface of the water. It feels like a reminder, but Phil can’t figure out what he’s meant to remember. 

Adra’s responses are starting to sound a little tinny, his presence in Phil’s mind stretched thinner. He tells Phil they’ve gotten to the building and found an unlocked window. Phil knows he should be pleased that they got in, but it feels even more like a trap now. 

And wrong. He’s suddenly certain they’re headed in the wrong direction. The snow has left Phil’s jacket speckled with white, and Phil reaches to brush it off. He looks up at the moon, starting its slow rise through the sky, despite Martyn’s attempts to beat it. They’d been moving slower this time, aware that they were missing their original edge of surprise.

The water is colder than he’d expected when he clambers over the side of the boat, shocking him back into the present. He looks down at his legs, wet up to the knee, and wonders when he decided to get out of the boat. He knows where he’s going, though. Or at least his legs seem too

He takes longer climbing up the tree-lined bank than the others had without anyone to help him and longer still to work his way through the woods. The roots and rocks are slippery underfoot from the small amounts of snow that have made it through the canopy. Thoughts of Dan not being able to sense Cae anywhere, of them turning back, not knowing where to go flit through his head, but they’re distant and hard to grab a hold of long enough to fully process. Phil keeps moving forward, only distantly aware that he’s walking. He can just barely hear the echo of Adra’s whispered _it’s empty_ as he comes up to the edge of the trees.

The clearing Phil steps into is wide and open, the moonlight reflecting off the unbroken layer of snow on the ground nearly blinding him for a moment. He knows where he is instantly, with a dizzying rush of déjà vu. 

He can’t hear or feel Adra at all and he’s not sure if he’s truly out of range now, or if his panic is just drowning everything else out. The moon is just where it’s supposed to be, at the center of the small piece of sky he can see, but there’s no dark shape that darts across it this time. His eyes snap immediately to the center of the clearing to find the tree, just where it had been in his dreams.

Unlike in his dreams all those nights ago, however, his fear is very much present and keeping his feet glued in place. But he sees them, the dark shape of their body hanging from the branches and he knows he has to move forward. His legs feel wobbly, but they manage to carry him all the way to the tree, close enough finally to reach out and touch. Which he doesn’t do. Not yet.

Their fuzzy brown fur is just as tempting as it had been in the dream, but Phil quickly shoves that thought aside.

“Cae? Are you Cae? It’s alright; I’m here to help you. I’m friends with Dan.”

They’re not responding, and Phil’s starting to panic. So much of this is exactly like his dream, but there are just as many details that are completely different, and Phil doesn’t know what to do. Why isn’t Cae responding? Why hadn’t they flown in earlier? 

_Adra_ he shouts as loudly as he possibly can in his head, receiving no indication that Adra’s heard. _Adra, we’re in the clearing Cae is here. Come help._ He tries his best to project himself as loudly as he can, thinking over and over again about the clearing and his path there and the urgency he feels. He gets nothing back though, so looks back up at the daemon in front of him in desperation.

With a jolt he realizes that Cae’s wings are bound. He’d wanted to ask permission, at least, speak to Cae and assure them that he’d bring them back to Dan, but it doesn’t look like he has much of a choice at this point.

“Sorry, sorry, I’m sorry,” he whispers through gritted teeth as his fingers brush the smooth and terrifyingly delicate skin of their wings. This does feel _more_ than it did when he’d felt the echo of Adra touching Dan, but he doesn't have the time or brain space to process it at the moment.

His fingers fumble with the ties, stiff and dumb with the cold and his nerves. He can remember the clasp of that hand on his shoulder like a physical thing and he tries to work faster.

With a suddenness and sickening familiarity that startles Phil into a half stumble, hand snapping back to his side immediately, Cae opens their eyes.

“Behind you!” they shout, voice slurred and slow.

Phil feels frozen in place as a hand grabs his shoulder, grasp heavy and hot. He’s spun around and finds himself face to face with a young and quite beautiful woman. Her teeth gleam in the moonlight for a moment in a triumphant grin, until she gets a good look at Phil’s face.

“You’re not him,” she says, her voice soft and melodic, despite the sharp tone. She pushes aside a piece of her thick, dark brown hair and Phil catches a whiff of a delicate, floral perfume. She’s smiling now, looking perfectly pleasant and patient, but her daemon, a monkey with gleaming golden fur perched on her shoulder, glares at Phil, eyes darting up and down his body. Looking, Phil realizes, for something that isn’t there.

“Yes I am.”

“You’re not,” the woman insists, though she sounds a little less sure this time. She squints her eyes at Phil.

“Sure I am. I haven’t got a daemon with me, have I? Because Cae’s my daemon.” Phil doesn’t really know where he thinks he’s going with this bluff, but it was the first thing he could think of. 

The woman turns to his own daemon who nods quickly, whispering something into her ear.

“But you don’t look like him.”

“I dyed my hair. And now I’m back to take my daemon—”

“The question is,” she continues, completely ignoring Phil, “if you’re not the daemonless boy I’m looking for, which daemonless boy are you?”

There’s a glint in her eye, and Phil realizes his mistake instantly.

_Adra, Adra, Adra, ADRA!_

“Actually—”

“Are you like him? Can you separate from your daemon? How did you do it? How old are you? Is yours not settled either?” She’s edging closer now, losing a bit of her composure as the words spill out of her mouth quicker with each new question.

“Dan,” Phil corrects reflexively, getting fed up with this woman who held Dan hostage for weeks but never bothered to learn his name apparently.

“Your daemon? That’s an odd name, isn’t it.”

“It’s a nickname,” he says quickly. He’s a terrible liar if confronted with direct questions, but he is good at evasion and if this woman is distracted enough by his ability to separate from Adra to believe his daemon has such a human name, he might be able to divert her attention long enough to get out of this somehow.

“Your daemon is male?” She drops her hand from Phil’s shoulder in her eagerness, and Phil takes a subtle step to the side, back towards Cae.

“Yes.”

“What form does he take?”

 _Hopefully a massive elephant who can trample you_ , Phil thinks as he responds, “Normally a lion, but he can still change.”

It had been a risk, but her eyes light up at his last two words, taking her eyes off him for the first time as she looks around the clearing, hand brought up to her chin. Her daemon though, Phil notices, still has his gaze locked onto Phil. 

“Fascinating. How old are you?”

“Twenty-two.”

The woman doesn’t give Phil room to provide longer answers, firing off her questions rapid fire. This works for Phil, as he doesn’t have any strategy aside from stalling this her as he continues to chant Adra’s name as loud as he can internally.

“It’s quite rare that your daemon hasn’t settled yet. I don’t think I’ve met anyone as old as you with an unsettled daemon. Are you a virgin?”

“I don’t think—” Phil sputters, thrown off by the frankness of her question.

“I’ll take that as a yes.” Her voice has changed, like silk sliding off to reveal cold steel below. Her eyes still gleam, but it looks less eager and curious now. More decidedly sinister. 

Phil takes another tiny step towards Cae, but he sees the monkey tracking his movement.

“And a lion. That’s quite a bold choice for someone as...unusual as you.”

Phil shrugs, trying to make his face look as though he’s never considered it. “That’s the form he likes best.”

“Are you a homosexual?”

Phil just splutters this time and the woman nods to herself before continuing.

“Do you know that daemon’s boy? Do you come from the same place? Is that why you can both separate from your daemons? Are you lovers? Is that how you did it?”

Her best theory is that two men sleeping together is enough to rip their souls away from them, and he feels caught between laughing in her face and slapping her.

“Yes,” he says instead, thinking it’s probably best to give her more of the information that seems to excite her. “We’re male witches and, ah, lovers.” The word falls clunkily from Phil’s mouth, but luckily she doesn’t seem to notice.

“Male witches? That’s not possible.”

“No? Explain my lack of daemon then.”

“I admit I can’t just yet, but if you’ll come with me I’m sure we can work it all out.”

Phil notices the syringe in her hand for the first time. Maybe she’d kept it hidden until now. He edges back a few steps, shoulder hitting the trunk of the tree, and he can feel Cae beginning to move behind him. Phil hopes whatever this woman drugged them with, whatever it is that’s probably in her hand right now, is starting to wear off. If Cae could just change—but they still don’t know who Phil is, or have any reason to trust that he’s there to help them.

“Where’s your cloud pine?” she asks, voice dripping with false concern. “Didn’t you bring it, witch? Why don’t you just fly away?”

Several things happen all at once, or in quick enough succession that Phil struggles to process them separately. There’s a sudden gust of wind against the back of his head and then a dark blur speeds past him, knocking into the woman and attaching itself to the hand holding the needle. Meanwhile, there’s a racket coming from the woods just to the left of them and when Phil finally tears his eyes away from Cae biting down on the woman’s arm and the monkey grabbing at them, he sees Adra crashing into the clearing, his full rack flashing bright white under the light of the moon.

Phil just points wordlessly at the woman, then shouts, “Cae!”

Cae looks to him then follows his gaze to Adra, shifting first to something small enough to disappear in the grip of the monkey daemon, then bursting back into the air as a raven. They’ve gone about a metre straight up when Adra’s antlers make contact with the woman’s daemon with a sickening crack. The woman screams and falls to the ground and Phil scrambles forward to retrieve the needle, jabbing it quickly into the woman’s arm and pressing the plunger down. Adra doesn’t lift his head away from the monkey until both he and the woman have fallen still.

When they do, he raises his head slowly, looking first at Phil, then tilting his head up to find Cae. Phil watches them wheel over towards him, and he assumes they’re aiming for the tree, but they land heavily on his shoulder instead. Before he can react, Martyn comes crashing out of the trees as well.

“Phil! Are you alright?” He’s got Hebe cradled in his arms and he runs right up to Phil, slinging Hebe over one shoulder to reach out and run a hand over Phil’s arm. Hebe chirps and jumps off, rushing over to Adra to check on him. “The building was completely empty and at first we thought it was a trap, but then it seemed like they had just left. Then Adra said he thought he could hear something from you and a minute later he just took off running.”

Cae ruffles their feathers, finally catching Martyn’s eye.

“Cae?” He asks, glance heavy on Phil again.

“Where’s Dan?” Phil asks instead of responding. Cae’s talons contract, careful not to pierce his skin, but sharp nonetheless.

Martyn spins around, scanning the edge of the clearing. “He was right behind me. Jack and Jimmy went back to the boat, but I’m pretty sure Dan followed me. He was just—”

Dan’s arrival is less sudden than Matryn and Adra’s, but possibly more dramatic. He staggers his way through a gap in the trees, panting heavily and just managing to haul himself over to Adra before he collapses against his side, clutching at his own waist as he winces.

“Gotta....do...more...cardio,” he wheezes, pressing his face into Adra’s flank for a few moments as Martyn and Phil watch on in dumb shock, waiting for him to notice. 

Cae’s talons are definitely piercing through his skin now.

“Phil, are you—” Dan starts, forehead still glued to Adra’s side, but then he looks up and cuts himself off with a gasp.

Cae is up and off Phil’s shoulder in an instant, flying towards Dan and transforming into a koala midair so they land heavily in Dans arms. Phil thinks Dan’s going to drop them for a moment, but then Cae is shifting rapidly through forms, wrapping themselves around Dan first as a snake, then a spider monkey, then shifting into a large bear and lifting him entirely off the ground.

Martyn and Phil stand by awkwardly, Martyn holding out as long as he can before he interrupts them.

“We really need to go. Back to the boat. Let’s—” He finishes the sentence with a shove of his hands in the general direction of the river, grabbing Phil’s arm to tug along as he sets off towards the trees.

Dan doesn’t pay him any mind though, turning with Cae cradled in his arms as a little fox with absurdly large ears to face Adra, who is still stood stock-still next to them.

“Cae, this is Adra. And Phil.” He gestures over to Phil, now being dragged towards the edge of the clearing. “They helped me find you and kept me company while we were apart.”

Cae nods with a quick jerk of their head, winding up restlessly to drape across Dan’s shoulders as a snake again, then climbing up to perch on top of his head as a tiny owl with large eyes.

“Thank you for taking care of him.” Their voice is somehow a surprise, though Phil knows daemons rarely sound like their humans. It’s lighter and brighter with a clear ring that makes Phil wonder what it sounds like when they laugh.

“Oh, it was, um, my pleasure. Eventually,” Phil amends when Dan snorts loudly.

“You can touch them,” Dan offers calmly, if a little breathily. Well, everything he’s saying is a little breathy right now. “If you want. I just meant—you have my permission, y’know.”

“Dan! Phil! What are you doing? Get a move on!” Martyn calls sharply, jolting Phil back into the reality of their situation, the danger they’re fleeing, and how stupid they’re all being.

“C’mon,” Dan whispers hoarsely, grabbing Phil’s hand and tugging him along as he runs past.

Phil holds his breath the entire way back to the boat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading! [Tumblr post here](https://phanomeheart.tumblr.com/post/612676137794076672/the-secluded-glade-t-81k-507k-so-far-start).


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always a huge thank you to @insectbah and @itsmyusualphannie for all the betaing help and for the gorgeous [edit](https://itsmyusualphannie.tumblr.com/post/190971009145/dan-and-his-daemon-cae-theythem-phil-and-his) of Dan and Phil's daemon forms. You both made this story so much better and clearer and I'm so grateful to you both for your help!
> 
> I had so much fun getting to play around in this universe with daemons and sexuality and gender identity and sense of self and all those sorts of things, so thanks so much for coming along with me on this journey!

Once they’re safely on board they’re steered into the mess hall before they can blink and wrapped to near immobility in layers of blankets, mugs of steaming tea placed into hands that can’t reach their mouths. Martyn fusses about them busily, turning Dan’s head this way and that as if checking for damage after a fight and, for some unfathomable reason, checking Phil’s temperature.

“Martyn,” Jack finally barks, grabbing Martyn by the shoulder and hauling him back. “Back off a moment. They need some space, not an eerily spot-on impression of your mother.”

Adra’s still a stag, taking up what feels like half of the room with his long legs and branching antlers. The ride back over in the lifeboat had been eventful with him like that, but no one had said a word to either of them, eager as they were to get away. As far as they could tell the woman Phil had met in the clearing was the only person left anywhere near the building, but they certainly weren’t going to stick around to find out otherwise. 

Cae, meanwhile, has been shifting into successively smaller animals and is currently rooting around among Dan’s hair as some sort of small rodent that looks a bit like [an angry cotton ball with disproportionately long back legs](https://www.google.com/search?q=Baluchistan+Pygmy+Jerboa&client=firefox-b-1-d&channel=tus2&sxsrf=ALeKk00XmCBbSGq1LCHnIpYhmPdMnEcXVA:1584489265632&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjt9M--2qLoAhVWmXIEHce8CVoQ_AUoAXoECBwQAw&biw=1440&bih=696&dpr=2#imgrc=_2MpesmWKBQ2mM). Every once in a while they’ll poke their whiskered nose out between the curls. Each time Adra leans forward, snuffling muzzle leaning closer and closer to Dan’s head.

“Bed!” Phil says finally, when he becomes concerned Adra might actually snort Cae up one of his nostrils. Phil stands in one sudden motion and nearly tips over with the unexpected weight of the blankets. Despite the bite of the cold air outside and the snow continuing to fall, he can feel the sweat gathering under his arms and at the small of his back. “I’m going to bed. It’s late and I’m—it’s been a long night. Dan? Um, would you like to—are you—”

Dan interrupts him with a loud, theatrical yawn, shedding his blankets as he stretches his arms out wide.

“Bed sounds good. We’re fine, really, Martyn. Thanks, but I feel better than ever, honest.” He gestures up to his hair, where the only trace of Cae is their tail poking out near the back.

They walk back to Phil’s room in silence, neither bothering to pause when Dan could turn right and head to Martyn’s room instead. Phil is expecting to Cae to have turned into a tick and burrowed their head into Dan’s skin by they time they get there, or else for Cae and Adra to retreat to the corner to have their own private conference, but instead as soon as Dan closes the door behind him Cae springs towards Phil.

They land in Phil’s outstretched arms as a rabbit, their dark brown fur ruffled and fluffy, quite similar to Dan’s hair. Phil looks up to Dan immediately, but he’s just grinning at them. Still, Phil wants confirmation.

“This is okay?” Phil asks, shifting Cae in his arms so that they’re cradled more securely in the crook of his left, leaving his right free to touch once he gets the okay from Dan. Their fur is so maddeningly soft against his forearm, and he desperately wants to sink his fingers into it, but he’s going to wait this time until he hears express permission.

Dan rolls his eyes, but he’s still grinning so wide his dimples are out on both sides. “Yeah, it’s fine. I mean it’s mostly up to Cae, but I’m assuming they’re fine with it.”

Phil finally gives in and lets his fingers run gently over Cae’s side first, then once he’s confirmed nothing’s going to come crashing down, he lets himself bury his hand in their fur. He gets lost in it for a bit, the sensation of the silky fluff against his skin, of holding a daemon other than Adra. Of holding _Cae_. It doesn’t feel like the queasy stomach churning he’d expected ever since Dan had touched Adra or the electrifying jolt like the first time he’d brushed against Cae’s bat wings. 

It doesn’t even feel like the all consuming fire he’d imagined as a child, watching his parents smile and laugh and kiss in stolen moments observing the way they seemed to love each other that was somehow different from anything he’d experienced so far. Listening to his mum and dad and aunts and uncles and Martyn and pretty much every adult he’d ever met try to describe this thing that would happen to him. This exciting, new, thrilling, overwhelming, warm, gentle, violent, sudden, enduring, indescribable thing that everyone wanted to talk about endlessly.

It just feels like...knowing Dan trusts him completely. Like holding some entirely new part of Dan that he’s let just Phil see. New but familiar and undeniably Dan.

Okay, so maybe everyone had been onto something with the indescribable bit. Or maybe Phil doesn’t know what it feels like. Probably, it feels like nothing he’s ever felt. It’s new and it’s buzzing or maybe those are just Phil’s nerves, but either way Phil feels lit up with the sensation of it.

He opens his eyes—when had he closed them?—and finds Dan and Adra still watching them intently. He’s got one of Cae’s velvet soft ears in his hand, rubbing it gently between his thumb and forefinger. Adra and Dan aren’t touching, though Adra takes up nearly a third of the room still in his stag form, and that somehow feels like a subtle rejection after everything. More pressing, though, is the growing guilt in Phil’s gut that Cae is in his arms right now, after everything all of them done to get Cae back to Dan. After all that time they hadn’t been able to touch.

“Don’t you want—” Phil doesn’t know how to articulate the call for proximity, for touch, for oneness between him and Adra. It’s such a constant in his mind that prying it apart from the rest of him to scrutinize on its own seems impossible. 

Then again, Phil feels a similar sort of tugging at his attention now, a call for closeness, only one that’s wholly new, dizzyingly foreign. He can’t untangle that either: the knot of him and Dan, him and Cae, Adra and Dan, Adra and Cae. They all seem important, impatient. Standing still feels easier than taking a step in any direction.

“It’s been so long,” he finally chokes out, arms held away from his chest, waiting for Cae to climb off, jump to Dan.

They don’t.

“Cae can decide for themselves what they want.”

Phil needs to sit down. He’s tired and overwhelmed and terrified and he feels a bit faint, and collapsing would be overly dramatic.

“It’s too much,” he whispers finally, not knowing what he means exactly, but Dan seems to understand him anyway.

“Let’s just go to bed, yeah? We don’t have to decide anything or do anything, or, uh, not do anything, you know, tonight.”

Phil’s rarely heard him that jumbled and he starts to wonder if Dan is feeling just as nervous and overwhelmed as he is. Cae’s trembling slightly in his grasp and Phil squeezes them a little closer to his chest.

Adra shrinks down finally, shaking out his mane and whipping his tufted tail from side to side. Phil wonders if there’s a particular reason he’s favoring obviously male animals tonight. He’d tested Dan this way when they first met him, but testing Cae seems entirely unnecessary. As Phil thinks this, Adra flicks his tail again sharply and glares up at Phil and Phil is aware in a sweeping wave of nerves that Adra’s feeling just as uncertain as Phil had when he’d first started talking to Dan. He’s unsure of how to interact with Cae.

Phil wants to reassure him, but he hasn’t got a clue about social customs between daemons. He wants to reach out and place Cae back in Dan’s arms. He wants to take Dan’s hand.

In the end he does none of these things, opting to lower himself on the bed, loosening his grip on Cae. They melt slowly out of his grasp, dragging their way onto the mattress on their belly. Phil glances away for a moment to check on Adra again, and when he looks back he finds another lion, this one with a scruffy sort of half mane.

He wants to ask about it, but it feels like too big a question at the moment. From the surprised look on Dan’s face, this might be a form Cae’s never taken before.

Adra lets out a low rumble that seems to fill the whole room, freezing them all in place for a moment. He’s the first to move again, loping over to the bed in a few strides and climbing on.

Looking at the two of them on the bed, Phil wonders how he and Dan are meant to fit. It had already been a tight squeeze last night with Dan, Phil, and Adra, and Cae’s nearly as big as Adra in this form, possibly a bit bigger. Adra stretches himself out alongside Cae, pressed together from shoulder to hip, and tucks his head between Cae’s chin and the mattress. Phil doesn’t think they’ve exchanged a single word so far, but Cae’s working their tongue over the visible fur on Adra’s head. They both shift to allow Cae to reach more of his face, and now they’re taking up far more than their fair share of the narrow mattress.

Phil focuses on the logistics of it, because otherwise he feels like he might cry. It’s something he never knew to want, something he never imagined he would get to see. Adra in his favorite, most vulnerable form in front of someone other than their family. Someone else who didn’t care, who cared more for Adra than Phil could have ever dreamed, whose own daemon was stretched out beside Adra with a mane to match his. Someone to match Phil. Another person, different from Phil in so many ways, but same in all the ways Phil had never let himself think about before.

It’s not quite as neat and simple, of course, as Phil might have imagined if he had ever let himself do that. But it’s Dan and it’s Cae, and that feels far better than neat and simple ever could, he thinks.

He slips his shoes off and rolls sideways onto the bed, pushing into Adra until he gives a bit and shuffles over a centimetre or two. Phil wraps an arm over Adra to tether himself and his hand lands on warm, soft fur that he’s pretty sure belongs to Cae.

The light switches off, and Phil listens to the sounds of Dan moving around the room, taking off his own shoes, tripping over Phil’s, grumbling, throwing a sock at him, lowering himself down onto the bed to press between Cae and the wall. 

Dan spends a few minutes turning and wriggling before settling himself, hand resting close to Phil’s on Cae’s back. Phil waits patiently but Dan’s hand doesn’t move. About 250 seconds into Phil’s count Adra hefts a loud sigh, shifting Phil’s arm so his hand is close enough to brush against the tips of Dan’s fingers.

Neither of them move for another minute or so, but Phil thinks he’s probably counting faster than actual seconds now so maybe it’s less. Dan still doesn’t do anything. Even though he has been the one to do and say all of the things so far. Most of the things. Maybe he thinks it’s Phil’s turn. Maybe Phil’s making all of this up in his head and Dan is completely unaware of how badly Phil wants to hold his hand.

Phil wiggles his fingers, slipping his middle, ring, and pinky under Dan’s. 

Dan curls his fingertips ever so slightly.

It’s all Phil needs to move again, more decisively this time, flipping his palm up and sliding it until it’s resting against Dan’s palm. The angle is awkward and Phil’s only actually holding about half of Dan’s hand and their grip gets jostled by the continual rise and fall of Cae’s back, but Dan doesn’t let go so Phil doesn’t either.

* * *

Phil wakes slowly, drifting in and out of consciousness blearily several times before he finally surrenders to the painful process of dragging himself out of the warm, cozy haze. He doesn’t quite remember why he’s so tired, just that he doesn’t want to remember yet, and feels he deserves the rest. That he shouldn’t worry too much about where he is or what time it is or why his toes are so cold at the moment. Those are things for later.

He becomes aware of himself in pieces. The blanket dragged half off his body, pulled taught by another person in the bed. _Another person in the bed_. Adra, nearby but no longer pressed against him. His calves where cold toes press between them, his hip with fingers curled loosely around them. Dan’s face in front of his own, eyes closed but smile broadening like he knows Phil is watching him somehow.

“Morning,” Dan mumbles, pressing his face deeper into the pillow they’re sharing.

Phil is too shocked to move. Dan’s mouth is close enough to his that Phil can feel his breath on his lips, taste the sweet, damp must of it.

He thinks he must have lost his mind between the clearing and the boat last night. Dropped it somewhere in the dark, left it buried under the thin dusting of snow. Why else would he be calling Dan’s morning breath sweet?

Dan’s got his eyes open now, and the smile has shrunk down some. He’s watching Phil’s face intently and Phil wonders how it looks like this. Swollen and crusty from sleep and so close and probably betraying his panic. He tries to smile back.

“Morning. Did you sleep alright?”

“Better once Cae and Adra decided to fuck off,” Dan says, grinning again.

Phil rolls his head back, partially to try to find the missing pair, partially to get a break from Dan’s unwavering gaze. Phil started to wonder if he’d ever made successful eye contact in his life. How do people just look at each other like that? You can’t even look people in the eyes that up close; you have to pick one. Phil doesn’t feel equipped to pick just one of Dan’s eyes. They’re both more than he can handle at the moment, in fact.

Cae and Adra are hanging from the ceiling, both bats this morning. Their bodies reach just low enough that Phil can reach up and brush his fingers against Adra’s furry head, so he does. Except, he realizes with the sharp zap of an anbaric1 shock, it isn’t Adra’s head.

He turns back to Dan, but Dan is still just smiling gently at him, as if nothing had happened. Maybe he thought Phil had meant to do that. Maybe he _wanted_ Phil to do that.

Phil finally asks the question that’s been sitting against the back of his teeth since they fled the forest. 

“Why haven’t you touched Adra again?”

Phil watches the furrows gather across Dan’s forehead. He wants to lean forward and press them smooth and then he wants to roll himself off the bed for wanting such a clichéd thing. He’s never felt so full of wants, pulled in all directions by them, stretched taut between them. 

“I wasn’t sure if you wanted me to. I thought maybe it being okay for me to touch him was just an under duress sort of thing. When it was necessary, you know. I don’t not want to. Or, er, you know...” He trails of, tugging at the hair at the back of his neck. 

Phil feels something bloom, hot and heady in his chest, radiating out through every last bit of him. It’s something he knew, probably, if he stopped to think about it. That Dan still wanted to. Or didn’t not want to. Phil tries to suppress a smile. It makes it feel easier that Dan’s a bit bad at this too.

“You can,” Phil says, and then after a long pause he adds, “I want you to.”

Adra drops immediately from the ceiling, landing on top of Dan’s head with a heavy thump and a shriek from Dan. Adra scurries quickly down his shoulder, across his back, and up under his knee as some small, brown-grey mammal moving too quickly for Phil to process. He leaves again as quick as he came, returning to his spot on the ceiling next to Cae, bodies huddled together.

It seems like Adra and Cae have worked out their initial nerves, Phil thinks.

“Don’t you think it’s strange that we touch each other’s daemons?”

“Not really, no. I don’t go around touching everyone’s daemon, but I touched my mother’s. It’s not inherently sexual or romantic. It’s intimate. It means I like you and I trust you. Not that we’re destined to be together or some shit like that.”

“Oh.” Phil hears the dejection in his own voice, wants to suck it back down into his lungs, hold his breath forever. Adra snorts from above them, though whether he’s disgusted by Phil’s tone or his overly dramatic response to Dan’s words Phil’s not sure.

“That’s not a bad thing, idiot. I just mean, like, you don’t have to feel pressured by it. It doesn’t have to mean anything we don’t want it to. Right?”

“But what if I do want it to mean something?”

It feels like it had taken all of Phil’s courage to say those words, pulled from the farthest, darkest corners of him and scrunched together in the best approximation of bravery he could manage and Dan just shrugs, infuriatingly nonchalant, noncommittal as always. Phil feels the jiggling of his foot still pressed between Phil’s calves, though. And even if he didn’t, Cae’s dead expressive. They squeak and squirm above the bed.

“Make it mean something then.”

As they’ve been speaking they’ve drifted slowly closer together. Phil is waiting, has been waiting. He’d much prefer to keep waiting. It seems like Dan is waiting too. 

Phil’s entire body is thrumming and his stomach is squirming worse than it was when Dan touched Adra the first time. Except this time he’s able to identify it as a pleasant kind of queasiness. One of them has shifted and now they’re even closer, noses just barely brushing. 

Maybe Phil’s still dreaming. None of this feels quite real, but he wants it to be real. After all this time he wants it to mean something. Something he chooses.

He waits a little while longer still, just to be sure, but Dan doesn’t budge. He’s tempted, for a moment, to push back, to try to out-stubborn Dan. But if the last few days with Adra have taught Phil anything, it’s that being the first one to back down, the first to show others what you’re feeling, can save everyone a lot of pain.

Their lips bump together a little clumsily, a little off center, and Phil tries to pull away to apologize, but apparently Dan doesn’t seem at all interested in that. He tilts his head and leans in closer and presses fizzing waves of pure static into Phil’s lips that radiate through him. Phil thinks he’s fallen off the bed for a moment, when he remembers his body exists with a sudden swoop of sensation, but Dan’s fingers curled around his hip tug him back to reality, to the two of them on the bed, until Phil feels like he might burst and he drags his mouth off Dan’s.

Dan draws away slowly, eyes still open and intent and tracking rapidly over Phil’s face. Watching himself being watched so attentively is too much for him at the moment, so Phil presses his eyes shut until he sees bursts of white light behind his eyelids. Everything is quiet and still and for a little while it feels like if Phil stays like this, maybe he can just freeze time and live in this moment forever.

As soon as his head clears a bit, it snaps immediately to Adra. What might have happened now that Phil’s finally had a kiss that definitely felt like it counted for something. Phil thinks he should be able to tell. He reaches up to Adra with his mind, but he feels nothing but the same sort of fizzy happiness, no overwhelming sense of sturdy, steady, sameness. No indication if he’s finally settled or not. He probably should have. If there was a moment for it to happen, this is it. 

And yet Phil still feels so incredibly unprepared. 

But then is anyone ever prepared for the moment their daemon settles? Does it matter either way? Phil’s not crushed under a lion at the moment, so that seems to answer that question at least. But does that mean Adra settled as a bat? Just because Phil kissed Dan when it happened? Or because Adra was with Cae? Are they really meant to spend the rest of their life in a borrowed form just because—

“Should I not have…” Dan asks, voice withering halfway through his question.

Phil’s eyes snap open and his hand finds Dan’s elbow, Dan’s arm, all the way up to Dan’s shoulder. His fingers feel clumsy. Is this how you touch another person? It feels like he never has before.

“No! No, I just...” his voice trails off as he glances up finally. Adra’s a bat, but that doesn’t tell him much. Or maybe it’s telling him everything about the rest of his life. 

But then Adra drops from his perch, and swoops down, landing softly on Phil’s chest to curl up in a pile of fluffy hamster. Phil lets out a long, deep sigh.

“Were you expecting Adra to settle?” Dan asks, voice gone quiet and gentle.

“No,” Phil lies.

“Are you disappointed he didn’t?”

“Maybe a little. Mostly surprised.”

“The kiss was that good, huh?”

Phil turns to Dan and he’s right up in Phil’s space, grinning and laughing and loose. Phil shoves him, unsettling Adra in the process. He shifts into a little wallaby between them, kicking Phil in the stomach as he propels himself back towards Dan. Dan and Phil tussle for a few minutes, Adra finally jumping off to the floor with an exaggerated huff to leave Dan and Phil on their own in the bed. They fall to a mutual stillness, Phil’s forehead resting against Dan’s. 

Phil doesn’t think he’s ever seen anyone look quite as happy as Dan does in this moment, and he doesn’t know what to do with the swell of emotion that floods his body.

“I don’t really know what I’m doing,” Phil whispers, pressing the confession into Dan’s smooth cheek, smudging it down into the crook of his neck. Dan stiffens for a moment, then relaxes in Phil’s embrace.

“That’s alright. We can work things out as we go. It’s worked out pretty alright for us so far, hasn’t it?”

“Just barely.”

Dan leans his body to pinch Phil’s arm between him and the bed, laughing and butting his head against Phil’s shoulder. This devolves into them wrestling some more, and perhaps kissing a bit more and generally running out of breath so that their laughter comes out in half-formed huffs and Phil stops making noise entirely until he has to beg for mercy.

Dan takes this as a cue to roll over and spring off the bed, disappearing below the frame as he tugs on a pair of socks that Phil’s pretty sure are the ones Phil was wearing yesterday. He can’t tell if he finds it cute or vile.

“I’m going to go on a walk,” Dan announces. Cae swoops down to his shoulder and attaches their little feet to the fabric of Dan’s shirt so they’re hanging upside down off of it.

Phil almost opens his mouth to stop him, but then he remembers there’s nothing holding Dan back from going out now. Besides most of the crew being gone, Dan’s got Cae back and he can go anywhere he wants. Which also means there’s nothing bringing him back here.

“I’ll be right back, no need to pout. I just wanted some fresh air. And maybe the two of you could use some time to yourselves for a bit? I know Cae and I have some catching up to do.”

He knows it’s a good thing that Dan can give them space now, and healthy that he’s suggesting it, but part of him wants to pull Dan back.

It’s stupid. Just a few days ago Phil would have been ecstatic to watch Dan walk out without having to worry about how long he’d be okay without Adra nearby. Now he watches them leave with a knot of emotions too convoluted to unravel.

Adra is the first to break the silence. “You _like_ him,” he teases, drawing out the ‘i’ as if they’re ten years old on the playground again, worried about cooties and crushes.

It’s silly and juvenile. 

Phil buries his face in his hands. “Shut up.”

Adra does just the opposite, crawling over to Phil on the bed, his little numbat tongue flicking out between words. “Do you regret kissing him?”

Phil feels the breath grow heavy in his lungs as he considers Adra’s question. Why he felt compelled to ask it. How Phil actually feels about it now that he’s more awake and able to process the implications and potential repercussions. 

“No. I wanted to. Why?”

“I just wanted to make sure you didn’t feel pressured. Because I like Dan. That doesn’t mean you have to.”

Before all of this started, Phil would have said that wasn’t true, that they do have to have the same feelings, the same thoughts, just by definition of what they are. Human and daemon. But now that he’s a little more ready to face the complexity and depth of his own feelings for Dan, he’s starting to realize just how many of Adra’s emotions he’s been blocking out this whole time, and how sharply they had contrasted with his own at the time.

“How long have you liked him?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think the whole time. Not like you do now. It’s different anyway, I think, the way you feel about him and the way I feel about him. I think it always will be, at least a little.”

“But you felt this way before I did?” Phil still avoids naming it, as always. What way he feels. Now it feels more like he doesn’t quite know how to define it than actively avoiding an obvious definition. He thinks he’s alright to sit with that uncertainty for a little while.

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry.”

Adra bobs his head down into his body and then back up in what looks like an approximation of a shrug. “We don’t always have to agree.”

“We usually don’t.”

“I think we agree on a lot of things. Just not always how to handle them.”

“So how would you handle this?” Phil asks.

“Handle what?”

“Dan.”

“Talk to him,” Adra says simply, as if it’s the most obvious solution. It probably is. It’s all he’s been telling Phil to do this entire time.

“And what about us?”

“What about us?”

“I’m sorry I made you leave again,” Phil says, voice cracking a bit.

“You didn’t make me. We agreed. I’m glad you thought of it. It was scary. When I couldn’t hear you anymore and then when I heard you all of a sudden, screaming at me I—I don’t think I’ve ever been more scared. But I don’t think it was a bad thing that we split up. It doesn’t have to be bad.”

“You were a stag again.”

“Yes,” Adra says, voice slow and guarded all of a sudden, dropping down into a chilliness Phil instantly regrets causing.

That wasn’t what he meant, even though it’s what he’s always meant before.

“I tried to convince the woman Cae was my daemon, when I was distracting her. And then she got confused and thought I said Dan was my daemon, but she got really excited about that. She asked if I was gay.”

It’s ridiculous, but he’s never actually said it out loud. He can practically feel the tension drop from Adra’s body when he hears the word, like a sigh of relief radiating through his whole body.

“What did you say?”

“I don’t remember. Yes, maybe. Or I implied it. I called Dan my lover.” Laughing at Adra’s wrinkled nose, Phil protests, “Only after she did.” Phil protests. Being able to laugh in this moment, about this particular topic, feels like a small miracle, like something he’d forgotten how to do.

“Guess I proved her right, coming charging in with my twelve point rack waving around.”

“I think she was probably a bit more preoccupied with your antlers for other reasons. But I also think—” Phil cuts himself off and draws in a deep breath. Then a couple more, just to be sure. “I like boys.”

Adra doesn’t respond, just watches Phil, crawling closer to him on the bed, placing one small paw on his knee.

“And—and you’re male, and I don’t think those two things have to be the same, you know? And maybe people will think they are, but that doesn’t matter. They don’t matter. So I don’t want you to feel like you can’t be a stag or a lion or a peacock—though a peacock is a little showy for us I think; I know I like bright colors, but that feels a little like overkill. And your tail would probably get stuck in doors all the time, but the point is—my point is I should never have tried to tell you what animal you could and couldn’t be and I’m sorry and you can take any form you like for however long you like and I’m going to try to stop caring so much what everyone else thinks about it.”

Adra doesn’t respond right away, and Phil starts to worry something he’d said had upset him. But as his silence stretches on longer, he starts to realize something else is currently consuming Adra’s attention

Phil had always thought this moment would be more dramatic. Something like a glass shattering. The sinking stomach finality of something that can’t be undone. A capsizing of the world as he knew it. He’d spent so much time thinking about it. When it would happen, why it hadn’t happened yet, what was wrong with him, if it would ever happen at all. If he even wanted it to happen. What he would do if he hated the form Adra settled in, if it laid bare what felt like his most precious, precarious secret.

Now none of those things are on his mind.

He can feel it happening, feel the subtle clicking into place, the warm exhale of it through his whole body. He doesn’t look up immediately to see what form Adra’s in. What he will be for the rest of their lives. He knows this moment’s important, the most important of his life according to some people, and he feels like he needs to take a moment to remember how to breathe.

His mum had always told him it would happen when he was ready, and that had always felt so infuriatingly vague, but now it just feels undeniably true. It’s scary and strange and permanent in a way he’s never really faced before, but it also thrums through his body like a live, buzzing thrill. Something new that he hasn’t entirely sorted out yet, but that feels distinctly good. Kind of like kissing Dan, but then again entirely different. Distinct. 

And Phil feels ready.

When he looks back up at Adra, he thinks maybe he shouldn’t have been surprised. Maybe the fact that this form never had a specific meaning, a specific purpose in the language of Adra and Phil, should have been a hint.

“No mane?” Phil asks finally when he finds his voice. He looks at Adra in front of him, small, pointed face with black stripes running across his eyes. With his white stripes running down his red and black body, round and fuzzy and soft and perfect for holding close to Phil’s chest. Adra as he will always be from now on.

Adra with nothing obvious to mark him as male. 

Adra looks down at his tufted tail, then back up to Phil.

“Guess not.” 

“You’re not going to miss it?”

“There are a lot of things I’m going to miss. But no. I don’t know if I really need it anymore.”

“And you didn’t...feel pressured?” Phil asks, voice faltering a bit as he repeats Adra’s question from earlier.

“You know I don’t get to pick my settled form.”

“Still. You’re not going to resent me?”

“As long as you don’t resent me for being cuter for you the rest of our lives.”

Phil lets out a burst of laughter, letting Adra’s joke drain some of the tension from the moment. They have more to talk about. Weeks and months and years and probably a lifetime of talking to heal past wounds and prevent new ones. Probably to heal new ones too. They’ll probably never stop misunderstanding and hurting and disagreeing with each other. But they can save some of those conversations for later. For now, Phil lays back down onto the bed and Adra climbs on his chest and curls up there, nose damp and cool through Phil’s shirt.

Dan comes back about twenty minutes later, stopping in the doorway with a mug in his hand. Phil knows Dan can tell the minute he sees them, though he’s not sure how exactly. Is there some signal settled daemons give off that he’s never noticed? Does Dan see it in Phil instead?

He tries to concentrate on Dan and Cae, but he doesn’t notice anything different about them. Not that there’s any reason Cae would settle at the same time as Adra did.

“Hi,” Dan breathes out finally, and he makes it sounds like the first time he’s meeting them. A real meeting, not like the way they actually met. Maybe this is a new sort of meeting. Phil tries to remember what it was like to see his friends and their daemons for the first time after they’d settled, but it was so long ago now. 

And of course this is different anyway.

Dan comes fully into the room, setting the mug down on the table before he reaches out a tentative hand. He still glances at Phil before actually making contact with Adra everytime. Phil hopes he’ll stop eventually, but for now it feels good. Phil nods and Adra springs up into Dan’s arms, flipping over onto his back to bare his pale, furry stomach for Dan to stroke. 

It still feels a little strange. Not the act of Dan touching Adra itself. That feels soothing in a muted, distant sort of way. He knows he’s feeling what Adra’s feeling, what it’s like for him. It’s the watching, Phil thinks, that’s bizarre. Whenever he’s seen affection shared between his parents or Martyn and Cornelia, or anyone else for that matter, their daemons might touch each other, but the humans don’t touch the other’s daemon very often. Never in front of Phil, at least, and very rarely if ever at all, as far as Phil knows.

It’s the sort of slightly off feeling Phil has come to recognize as different, something that sets him apart from most of the other people he’s known. but not inherently bad or wrong. 

“What’s it like?” Dan asks, voice hushed.

“Not all that different yet. It’s only been about half an hour. But...sturdier, I guess.” He could try to explain further, but he thinks it would probably come out as garbled nonsense. The only thing he can think is that Dan will know when he knows, as much as that sort of response used to infuriate Phil.

He glances over at Cae, hanging from a spoon Dan must have stolen from the kitchen and tied to the shoulder of his shirt. Phil can’t help but smile at the absolute absurdity of it.

“Are you trying to start new fashion trends? That’s very...unique.”

“I normally have clothes that they can hang off of easier if they’re a bat. Things with ties or pockets, or bits I’ve added on myself for a better grip. These t-shirts of yours aren’t very convenient for bat daemons.”

Phil laughs. “Sorry for not anticipating that. If Cae settles as a bat are you going to tie cutlery to all of my shirts?” 

He realizes belatedly that his question seems to assume that Dan’s going to go on borrowing Phil’s shirts, and Phil holds his breath as Dan’s face darkens, the few seconds he takes to respond sending Phil into a spiral of catastrophe.

“I don’t...I don’t know that they will. Settle, I mean. Like at all, not just as a bat. We haven’t talked about it all that much, but I just feel like…” He trails off, watching Cae as they drop off his shoulder and flit around the room. “I think they’ll probably spend most of their time as a bat, but I think they like being able to change their mind. Not just being one thing.”

Phil’s still not sure that’s allowed, but then again he’s not sure who’s setting the rules and why Dan and Cae can’t break them if they want. They’re all breaking enough supposed rules between the four of them already.

“That makes sense,” he says, not sure what else to say.

“Would that bother you?”

“Why would it bother me?” Phil asks, genuinely taken aback. 

“You were upset when you thought Adra wasn’t going to settle. You thought it made you stand out in a way you didn’t like. You didn’t like any of the ways he stood out, and Cae and I aren’t the most subtle either. If we—” He cuts himself off, blushing and looking back up at Cae again, and Phil can’t help but grin.

“If we?”

“I just meant if we spend more time together,” his words are slow and meticulously measured and Phil can practically see the careful transfer of them from his head to his mouth and out into the space between them, “we might draw people’s attention, and if you don’t want that—”

“I’m working on it, but don’t worry about me. I’m done dictating how other people want to express themselves.”

Dan looks a bit skeptical, but he doesn’t protest. Phil knows he’ll probably have to earn Dan’s trust on that front, just as he’ll have to earn Adra’s, and earn his own trust too. Instead of responding, Dan flops down onto the bed behind Phil, stretching his arms out wide to cover the whole width of it. He glances back up over his chest at Phil shyly, just watching him for a moment.

“I think it’s time for a nap,” he says, gesturing vaguely at the space beside him. “You could probably use one too. You tossed and turned all night. And you snored.”

“Did not!”

“You did. But it’s okay, I’m used to it. Cae snores too.”

“Don’t!” they protest from the ceiling in a high squeak.

“If I’m so horrible to share a bed with maybe I should just leave you to it,” Phil sniffs. “I could just drink the coffee you so thoughtfully brought for me.”

“It’s probably cold by now. Naps are better. I’ll suffer through your terrible sleeping habits.”

“So selfless,” Phil laughs, but he leans his body back down until he’s pressed up against Dan’s side, his face buried into Dan’s still outstretched arm. He feels absurdly, recklessly bold in this moment, but then again maybe none of this is all that drastic. Maybe it’s just a nap.

They sleep on and off for the rest of the day, Dan managing to sleep more than Phil. He probably has more to catch up on. Phil doesn’t think he slept much at all when he was apart from Cae. When Phil finally wakes up fully, he has Adra bring him his book and spends some time reading. And maybe a little time watching Dan and Cae sleep. Cae does snore just a bit, in a high, nasally whistle from the ceiling, and Dan’s drooling onto the pillow. 

Eventually Phil’s stomach starts to rumble, and he shakes Dan all the way awake to offer to go look for food. Somehow Phil winds up heading to the kitchen accompanied by Cae instead of Adra. He feels a bit nervous, shuffling through his brain for something to talk about as if they’re on an awkward blind date.

“Thank you again for helping Dan while we were—” Cae doesn’t finish their thought and Phil gives them a moment before responding.

“Of course.”

“I know he can be a pain in the arse though. He’s got a lot of thoughts and feelings and opinions and sometimes when he gets overwhelmed by them he thinks it’s best to shove them out onto someone else. Especially when there’s a lot going on and he feels insecure, he tends to over project confidence and it can come off as a little brash I think.”

“You don’t have to apologize for him. I wasn’t exactly the most pleasant to be around either.”

“Still, I think he makes a better first impression when I’m there to temper him a bit.”

“He made a fine first impression.” It may have been more like a second or third impression, but Phil thinks it had just as much to do with his own hang-ups as it did with Dan’s...unique energy. “But I am really glad to meet you. Dan talked about you a lot.”

They chat easily the rest of the way to the canteen, making fun of Dan and talking about Cae’s favorite forms to take. Phil stays far away from anything too serious and Cae does too, but it doesn’t feel like something they need to talk about right now. It’s nice to be able to just get to know them through simple, easy things. Just have a normal conversation.

Bernie’s eyes track them as they move through the canteen, and Phil knows he can tell who Phil has with him. He tries not to let it bother him and mostly succeeds, though the plates rattle together lightly in his hands and he’s happy to finally get back out into the anonymity of the empty deck.

He doesn’t know if getting to know someone else’s daemon is a normal thing people do when they’re...interested in one another. Probably not. For one, it’s not something most people would be physically capable of doing, at least not the way Dan and Phil are doing it now. But even if they could, he doesn’t think most people spend time getting to know the other person’s daemon specifically. Maybe they wouldn’t even be doing this if Dan hadn’t spent so much time getting to know Adra separately. But Cae feels so distinct from Dan, while still obviously a part of him, and Phil wants to get to know them too. Both of them. 

If Adra were here Phil thinks he’d be nudging him with a reminder that they don’t have to do what everyone else is doing. Phil does his best to remind himself on his own.

When they get back to the room Dan is passed out again with Adra curled up on his chest, and Phil takes a moment to smile at them. Then he sends Cae to flop down onto Dan’s face, wrapping their wings around his head until he sits up.

They eat and play a few games of cards and this time Cae turns into a polecat and tussles with Adra while Dan and Phil argue and slap each other’s hands away from the cards. Phil finally admits defeat after losing four rounds in a row, and suggests they head to bed, blushing the entire time. There’s more room in the bed now that Adra’s smaller, and Cae mirrors his form once again to curl up next to him in between Dan and Phil. Between all the napping and excitement throughout the day Phil had expected it to take him a while to fall asleep, but he finds himself drifting off almost instantly, lulled by the warmth emanating off of Dan and Cae’s rhythmic snores.

* * *

Phil wakes early the next morning and goes out to the deck, a hazy fog sitting heavy on the river to match his murky morning brain. He had left Dan sleeping still, and that was harder than he’d ever imagined. Every last centimeter of Phil had longed to crawl back into bed with Dan and curl up into the warmth of him. Phil had always loved cuddling with just about anyone he could get his hands on, and Dan radiates enough heat to keep Phil snug indefinitely. 

But his thoughts had eventually grown loud enough to crowd him out of bed and out into the open air. Martyn had found him there, shivering and silent, and brought him a mug of coffee. They were nearly home, he said. He didn’t try to talk anymore, probably recognizing Phil’s mood. He also didn’t say anything about the numbat perched on the railing beside Phil. Maybe he didn’t notice. Probably he didn’t expect a response either way. 

He leaves Adra and Phil alone after a bit, taking the empty cup with him as he goes. Hebe nuzzles Adra quickly then runs after.

“What are we going to do now?” Adra asks after a while, voice seeming to get swallowed up by the moisture thick in the air.

“I don’t know.”

“What do you want to do?”

It seems a bit like a Dan question. Or at least a question Adra might not have asked him before this whole journey. Not right away at least. Phil takes a moment to consider.

“It might be nice to travel a bit. See a little more of the world; see if it’s really that different from Rawtenstall.”

“That’s rather adventurous of you.”

“We’re adventurous now, didn’t you know? Besides,” he adds, after Adra sticks his long, curved tongue out at him, “it might be easier with a bit of company, if we can swing it.”

“They should probably lay low for a while.”

“I think between Martyn, mum, and I we’ll be able to convince Dan to stay with us for a few days at least.”

“Are we going to just leave those kids—”

“No. I don’t think Dan will drop it, anyway. Maybe we can figure out some way to help without putting all of us in quite so much danger again. What do you think? What do you want to do?”

“That all sounds good to me.”

Phil slides his hand along the railing so it’s close but not quite touching him. Adra rearranges his body so he can rest his chin on Phil’s fingers, a layer of warmth so distinct from the bite of the cold metal beneath his hand. They stay there, watching the banks along the river grow more and more familiar until the crowded grey clump of his town becomes visible in the distance.

At some point Dan comes out to stand beside him, Cae still hanging from the stolen spoon. They both watch the distant harbor growing closer, not saying a word. Phil wonders what they’re thinking. If they’re planning their escape as soon as their feet touch solid ground, or if they might be persuaded to come back home with Phil and Martyn, for some lunch at least. Maybe dinner. Maybe a night of sleep in a decent bed. Maybe enough time to let things die down and make some travel plans, maybe with an extra travel companion.

Phil slides his other hand the opposite way down the railing, stopping just short of where Dan’s fingers curl around the cold metal. It doesn’t mean anything, he lectures himself as he tries to regulate his breathing. Either way, whether Dan takes his hand or not, it doesn’t tell Phil what he’s going to do or how he feels or how the future will turn out. Nothing can tell him that, except maybe his dreams, but even they aren’t that reliable.

His breath still catches, though, when Dan lays his hand on top of Phil’s, warm and large enough to cover all of Phil’s skin.

As the harbor grows close enough to start making out the details of individual ships and faces on the docks, Phil isn’t worrying about what he’s going to do or what job he’s going to get or when he’s going to leave his childhood home and finally make a full adult life for himself. Instead he focuses on the warmth enveloping each of his two hands, the way it leeches up his arms and into the rest of him, staving off the chill of the morning air. That, he thinks, is more than enough for now.

* * *

  1. Anbaric=electric in this universe. [ ▲ ]



**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading! [Tumblr post here](https://phanomeheart.tumblr.com/post/613329190745407488/the-secluded-glade-77-83k-589k-total-t). I also embroidered a little Adra as a numbat [here](https://phanomeheart.tumblr.com/post/613329939565035520/i-embroidered-one-of-phils-daemons-less-common).

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much for reading! [Tumblr post here](https://phanomeheart.tumblr.com/post/190971160262/the-secluded-glade-chapter-16-t-87k-summary). I plan to update twice a week on Saturdays and Wednesdays. All of the chapters are already drafted.


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